This article is from page 6 of the 2006-10-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
CLARE novelist, Edna O’Brien said this week that it was “hell” to write her controversial book centred on the triple murder by Brendan O’Donnell 12 years ago.
Ms O’Brien’s novel on the tragedy, ‘In the Forest’, was published four years ago. But promoting her new novel this week, the Tuamgraney native said that she didn’t write “’In the Forest’ to get into trouble or to offend”.
The 2002 novel centred on O’Donnell murdering Imelda Riney, her son, Liam and Fr Joe Walshe in 1994. The book was dedicated to their memories.
The east Clare woman – who first became engulfed in controversy with the publication of her first novel, ‘The Country Girls’ – said that ‘In The Forest’ “was a story as much about Ireland and Ireland’s psychology and pathology and secrecy and hypocrisy and tragedy and I could pick about seven more words, but they are not necessary, as well as about those four protagonists, Imelda Riney, little boy Liam, Fr Joe and Brendan O’Donnell”.
O’Brien said, “I was accused of badgering people and knocking on doors. I couldn’t knock on doors because I’ll tell you why. I had to go into the forest myself because the four people who died were dead.
“It was hell to write and the outbursts and the very unfair and vicious outbursts were do to with fear, the fear and the shame and the annoyance of unearthing something that people would rather leave a closed book, in fact not a book, a closed everything.”
She added, “What I felt was that ‘In The Forest’ was a forest near to where I come from and, as I said at that time, if the forest was in Leitrim, Armagh or in Kerry, I could not have written that story.”
Living in London for a number of years, Ms O’Brien said, “A little distance whets the obsession. I come to Ireland a lot. I am very lucky. I am a voluntary exile.
“I am not banished and I am made feel welcome and very lucky when I go home now and (meet) my nephew Michael Blake. Everyone is fine to me.”
Ms O’Brien said, in an RTÉ interview, that County Clare “is my landscape”.
She said, “It is so important to me. Hedgerows, gateways, sound of wind, sound of rain, cows, everything is as much character in my books as the characters themselves.”