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Sat 05 May 2009Still writing after all these years
THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW: EDNA O'BRIEN: The banning of her novels in the 1960s may have defined her early career, but Edna O'Brien's prodigious talent and staggering workrate have prevailed since then.
EDNA O'BRIEN - the name itself is an evocation of a different time, a different country. A time when young Irish girls joined in processions behind plaster Virgins to place their offerings on May altars, rosary beads numbing their cold fingers, cotton dresses whipping about their chilly legs. A time when, with the secrecy of the grave, we exhaled our warm breath on to rattling windowpanes and traced our would-be lovers' names on the glass.
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