In 1960 Edna O'Brien took an axe to the frozen sea of Irish social conformity with her sexually charged debut novel "The County Girls". In Ireland, the book was immediately banned – and burned. Now a hard-hitting new Irish documentary film will reveal O’Brien’s final testimonies, bringing her private diaries to life, and revealing her extraordinary experiences in Ireland, London, and New York, where Vanity Fair once referred to her as “the playgirl of the Western world.”
But don't expect another sainted life of the great Irish writers. Award-winning director Sinead O'Shea and her famous subject are not interested in the kind of Soviet style iconography that befell Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, Shaw and Yeats.
“I first met her about ten years ago,” O'Shea tells IrishCentral. “I used to do profiles of Irish and English authors for Publishers Weekly. Basically, she had no choice but to say yes, so I went round to her house in Chelsea and I really fell in love with her.”
O'Shea, who studied English at Trinity in the 1990s, says she began with a very neutral position. “I studied English literature in Dublin, but there was never a mention of her on my course. She was just very out of fashion, so by the time I got around to reading her I found her work so amazing and also so fresh. I also felt it very much connected to my own adolescence, which was in the 1990's. So in the end I was quite humbled by the prospect of meeting her. I think anyone who meets her is kind of always knocked over by the force of her personality.”
Edna O'Brien in London in the 1970's
“She was so forceful and so charismatic, she lures you entirely into her world and her way of thinking. like she really grips you. And I think it's the same with her writing, but it's unusual for someone to be both you know, in their writing and in their person.”
“You take on her worries,” O'Shea recalls. “You laugh at what she finds funny. You're captivated by what she wants you to you know, she's so magnetic. And, you know, I met someone who at this stage was in her 80s. I can't even begin to imagine what she was like when she was younger.”
When asked how she persuaded O'Brien to participate in the film, O'Shea is candid.
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“Sometimes a character can't really sustain (the scrutiny of) a whole feature-length film but I just knew O'Brien could. But how do you get her to agree to it? She said no for about a year and then a mutual friend stepped in and persuaded her.”
“But the time I met her she was, I guess, kind of weakened. She realized this was her last chance, her last stand, her final testimony. So she has really gone all out in the film. She shared her diaries with me, she's very open. And she directed me to what she said were the most naked parts of the diaries like she really wanted everything to be said, which I find amazing. I just think that's so brave.”
That is so not Irish, I tell her. That defies everything that we're taught from the cradle. Don't make a show of yourself. Keep your head down, say nothing.
“Yes, I just still can't believe that she did that, it was just extraordinarily courageous, I think, for her to do that,” O'Shea agrees. “And so I interviewed her once and then she kind of fell ill before the interview was finished, and she was going to hospital. She's in hospital for a few months. Then we did a few audio interviews, and then we did a kind of final interview in April of 2024 (three months before her death).”
Anything that breaks the frozen reverence that Joyce, Yeats and Beckett are often encased in is to be celebrated. “I think that reverence has been really bad for the culture of younger literary writers, especially male ones. I think they're, they're so paralyzed and by these kinds of predecessors, and it's so grim. No, this new documentary is a very blood and guts portrait and fantastic kinds of fun. And it's like, it's quite filthy with even, I would say, a few surprises in there.”
"Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story" will make its New York debut at the DOC NYC festival on November 13 at 6.30PM. For tickets CLICK HERE.