August is a Wicked Month

Product Information

Upon publication August Is a Wicked Month, as with most of O'Brien's early books, was banned in several jurisdictions, including by Ireland's strict Catholic rulers.

I don't regret reading this slim volume, but I can't say that I will be recommending it to very many people either. O'Brien just kept throwing test after test at poor ineffectual Ellen, who by the book's end is finally starting to take her life in hand and be adult enough to handle large hotel bills, physical ills, grief, and getting rid of men who really mean nothing to her. In my opinion O’Brien is a less happy and less moral Barbara Pym, she’s a MUCH happier and sexier Anita Brookner and for some reason I want to throw in W. The novel trundles in this direction long enough to lull you into a false sense of security but is swiftly overtaken by the harsher realities of life. A good introduction to O'Brien for those who don't know her work, and a yearning look back at her early work for those who do.In this novel, squashed strawberries “leak blood” and flowers have “no smell” - there is a dystopian conjoining of artificiality, decadence, diseased bodily effluvia, and consumerism (of women’s bodies as well as goods) despite the glamorous continental setting and the wealth on display.

Separated from her husband and young son, Ellen leaves behind the loneliness of London for a new life of excitement and sexual freedom:a ‘jaunt into iniquity’ on the gorgeous French Riviera. For example, on page 7, Ellen tells the milk boy that she has never opened wide (maybe her heart or her thighs or her vagina) to a man before. It made me think about so much and I can see from having re-read the earlier sections that O’Brien had carefully plotted the entire story arc.I’ve read a handful of Edna O’Brien’s novels in the past, but August is a Wicked Month is by far my favourite. You feel like you are watching a girlfriend do all sorts of things that you know are bad for her, and you just want her say please stop doing this to yourself, but you also know she won't listen. She escapes to the French Riviera and meets a new range of people, all the time realising that she is yearning for something that cannot be experienced through meaningless sex.