An account of one of rock 'n' roll's legendary drummers doesn't go deep enough.
European scholars can only guess.
Novelist David Gates talks about his overeducated, self-tormenting characters, the genius of Dickens and the seductive pursuit of perfect taste. But the lives of O'Brien's women characters were filled with a new kind of suffering, the loneliness and isolation that came with defying their Catholic roots. Kate and Baba, the central figures in O'Brien's trilogy, were creatures with an overtly sexual makeup, prepping for the pains of freedom. A journalist and TV producer, O'Faolain frames her book as the portrait of a young feminist, and she give us a sign of what the literature of a sleek, successful Ireland might be like. The vision is strangely dispiriting.