The Country Girls is a thrilling story about two country girls named Caithleen (Kate) Brady and Bridget (Baba) Brennan. It's the first of Edna O'Brien's books about the two young girls. The other two books in the series are: The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). The country girls is written by O'Brien in 1960 and was her breakthrough novel.
             Edna O'Brien was born in Twamgraney, County Clare. She was educated locally at Scarriff, and in Loughrea, County Galway. Her family was opposed to anything to do with literature and later she described her small village "enclosed, fervid and bigoted." When O'Brien was a student in Dublin and her mother found a book of Sean O'Casey in her suitcase she wanted to burn it. After finishing primary school O'Brien was educated at the Convent of Mercy in Loughreu (1941-46). In Dublin she worked in a pharmacy and studied at the Pharmaceutical College at night. During this period she wrote small pieces for the Irish Press. In 1950 she was was awarded a licence. She got married in the summer of 1954 and moved with her husband, the Czech/Irish writer Ernest Gébler, and two sons to London. She got divorced in 1964, but she has remained in England.
             From the publication of her first book, The Country Girls, O'Brien achieved a notoriety in Ireland by the relatively free treatment of sexual themes, but several of O'Brien's books, dealing with childhood and disappointments in sexual love, brought her into conflict with the Catholic Church, and got many of her books placed on the list of books banned by the Irish Censorship Board. She has concentrated on stories set in Ireland and on the themes dealing with female sensuality, male treachery, Irish nostalgia and good times amid difficult circumstances. She has a wonderful ability to describe scenes and an unhibited approach to her subject matter. Several of her books were suc...