Kate O'Brien (1) (1897–1974)
Author of The Land of Spices
For other authors named Kate O'Brien, see the disambiguation page.
Works by Kate O'Brien
Oggi e l'attesa 1 copy
Associated Works
Dublin and Cork: A Book of Photographs — Introduction — 5 copies
Then and Now. A Selection of Articles, Stories & Poems, Taken from the First Fifty Numbers of ‘Now & Then’,… (1935) — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- O'Brien, Kate
- Legal name
- O'Brien, Kathleen Mary Louise
- Birthdate
- 1897-12-03
- Date of death
- 1974-08-13
- Burial location
- Faversham Cemetery, Faversham, Kent, England, UK
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Ireland (birth)
- Birthplace
- Limerick, Ireland
- Place of death
- Canterbury, Kent, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Limerick, Ireland
London, England, UK
Bilbao, Spain
Roundstone, County Galway, Ireland
Kent, England - Education
- Laurel Hill Convent, Limerick
University College Dublin (1919) - Occupations
- journalist
teacher
playwright
novelist
screenwriter
essayist (show all 8)
travel writer
biographer - Organizations
- Manchester Guardian
- Short biography
- Kate O'Brien was born in Limerick, Ireland. When she was five years old, her mother died, and she was sent to board at a convent school. She studied English and French at University College, Dublin, and after graduation moved to London. She worked as a governess in Spain, where she began to write, and then returned to England and got a job as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian. With the success of her 1926 play Distinguished Villa, she became a full-time writer. Her first novel, Without My Cloak (1931), won both the Hawthornden and James Tait Black prizes. The Ante-Room (1934) and The Land of Spices (1941), which explored themes of female sexuality, were banned in the Irish Free State. Her books Pray for the Wanderer (1938) and The Last of Summer (1943) criticized what she saw as the smug puritanism of her native country. Her most successful novel was the anti-fascist That Lady (1946). It was adapted as a Broadway play in 1949 and as a film in 1955. She returned to live in Ireland in 1950 but went back to England in 1965. In addition to novels and plays, she wrote film scripts, short stories, essays, two biographies, and very personal travelogues of Ireland and Spain.
Members
Reviews
The Ante-Room: B Format (Virago Modern Classics) by Kate O'Brien
Good novel about love difficulties in a wealthy Catholic family in 1880 Ireland. Interesting on the power of religion. The solution to the problem of the syphiliic brother didn't seem too plausible. Somewhat reminiscent of Henry James in the unnecessarily lengthy soliloquies of the main character.
Angele Maury, a French actress traveling with friends through Ireland, decides to take a side trip to the town of Drumaninch and meet her dead father’s family, the Kernahans. The year is 1939, and the world is feeling the tensions of Europe on the fringe of war. There was obviously a rift in the family when her father left Ireland, and the past seems to loom over the present with secrets and resentments that Angele is completely unaware of.
Among those Angele meets in Ireland are her two male cousins, Martin and Tom, her female cousin, Jo, and the very bitchy and cruel Aunt Hannah. Both of the men are drawn to their new cousin and we know almost immediately that there is going to be trouble in paradise. That Hannah rules her family is obvious, and that she despises the presence of her niece just as apparent to the reader, if not to the other characters involved.
I found the rapidity of the relationships formed to be a bit disconcerting, but this is a different time than now, and in the context of life of the time and the looming threat of war that hovers over the world, perhaps love is easier to fall into, if no easier to comprehend. At least O’Brien resisted making the relationships easy or uncomplicated and left the characters with the same doubts the reader entertained.
Love can survive, a little or a long time, this lesson of its insufficiency--because it must, because self-love and self-respect insist; because pleasure is strong, and compromise is an understood necessity, and because lovers learn to understand love cynically and yet value it.
How much do these individual lives, personal problems, torn hearts and hurts matter against the backdrop of the war that is coming? Will any of these people survive to see the end of the war? Will they look back on this summer of angst and wonder if they had not given it more meaning than it should have carried, or perhaps wishing that they had been a bit kinder and more accepting of one another and embraced the simple lives they enjoyed? All questions I was left with at the end of the novel and ones that I think would have been in the minds of many people at the time this novel was written.
… (more)
Among those Angele meets in Ireland are her two male cousins, Martin and Tom, her female cousin, Jo, and the very bitchy and cruel Aunt Hannah. Both of the men are drawn to their new cousin and we know almost immediately that there is going to be trouble in paradise. That Hannah rules her family is obvious, and that she despises the presence of her niece just as apparent to the reader, if not to the other characters involved.
I found the rapidity of the relationships formed to be a bit disconcerting, but this is a different time than now, and in the context of life of the time and the looming threat of war that hovers over the world, perhaps love is easier to fall into, if no easier to comprehend. At least O’Brien resisted making the relationships easy or uncomplicated and left the characters with the same doubts the reader entertained.
Love can survive, a little or a long time, this lesson of its insufficiency--because it must, because self-love and self-respect insist; because pleasure is strong, and compromise is an understood necessity, and because lovers learn to understand love cynically and yet value it.
How much do these individual lives, personal problems, torn hearts and hurts matter against the backdrop of the war that is coming? Will any of these people survive to see the end of the war? Will they look back on this summer of angst and wonder if they had not given it more meaning than it should have carried, or perhaps wishing that they had been a bit kinder and more accepting of one another and embraced the simple lives they enjoyed? All questions I was left with at the end of the novel and ones that I think would have been in the minds of many people at the time this novel was written.
… (more)
In the summer of 1939, Angèle Maury, a young French actress, is traveling through Ireland and makes a spontaneous decision to visit the house where her father grew up, now occupied by relatives she has never met. Little does she know the impact her visit will have. As stated in Eavan Boland’s introduction:
She will remind them, for good and ill, that the past is inescapable. She will bring into their consciousness the names of threatened cities and wasted loves. She will change everything before she leaves.
Angèle’s appearance on the doorstep is a complete surprise to her Aunt Hannah and adult cousins Tom, Martin, and Jo. Hannah is distant and brusque at first; the cousins are more welcoming. As Kate O’Brien slowly teases out the details, it becomes clear Hannah has kept a number of secrets over the years, including the existence of a brother-in-law who left home, married a French woman, and never returned. Angèle is a fly in Hannah’s ointment to say the least, but she will never show it, remaining at all times the gracious hostess. That is, until Angèle’s relationships with her children pose a real threat to Hannah’s carefully crafted existence. Here, once again, O’Brien is master of the slow reveal. Not surprisingly, I was on Angèle’s side all the way, and sympathetic to the three cousins whose lives had been so craftily manipulated for their mother’s benefit.
The onset of World War II brings this brilliant character study to a close, leaving many unanswered questions about the family’s future.… (more)
She will remind them, for good and ill, that the past is inescapable. She will bring into their consciousness the names of threatened cities and wasted loves. She will change everything before she leaves.
Angèle’s appearance on the doorstep is a complete surprise to her Aunt Hannah and adult cousins Tom, Martin, and Jo. Hannah is distant and brusque at first; the cousins are more welcoming. As Kate O’Brien slowly teases out the details, it becomes clear Hannah has kept a number of secrets over the years, including the existence of a brother-in-law who left home, married a French woman, and never returned. Angèle is a fly in Hannah’s ointment to say the least, but she will never show it, remaining at all times the gracious hostess. That is, until Angèle’s relationships with her children pose a real threat to Hannah’s carefully crafted existence. Here, once again, O’Brien is master of the slow reveal. Not surprisingly, I was on Angèle’s side all the way, and sympathetic to the three cousins whose lives had been so craftily manipulated for their mother’s benefit.
The onset of World War II brings this brilliant character study to a close, leaving many unanswered questions about the family’s future.… (more)
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- Also by
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- Rating
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