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The Country Girls

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The Country Girls

By: Edna O'Brien
Narrated by: Edna O'Brien
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About this listen

It is the early 1960s in a country village in Ireland. Caithleen Brady and her attractive friend, Baba, are on the verge of womanhood and dreaming of spreading their wings in a wider world - of discovering love and luxury and liquor and above all, fun. With bawdy innocence, shrewd for all their inexperience, the girls romp their way through convent school to the bright lights of Dublin – where Caithleen finds that suave, idealised lovers rarely survive the real world.

©2010 AudioGO Ltd (P)1960 Edna Gebler Contemporary Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Ireland Heartfelt

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Loved Edna O Brien’s voice accent and the pace of her delivery. Captivating and very typical account of young lives in Ireland in the fifties and sixties

Spoken Language

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I normally really appreciate when Audiobooks are read by the author. That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate it this time around and although Edna narrates beautifully, her voice just isn’t the right fit.

Read By the Author

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Brilliant novel, gripping, compelling, laced with dry humour… a phenomenal insight into the sometimes tragic inner world of a girl coming of age at a time when this perspective was very rare.

Captivating

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Started this as a sort of antidote to a surreal and violent Murakami novel. Found it at once absorbing, gentle and evocative of a time before my own. The characters' voices are wonderfully scripted in the gentle Irish brogue one might expect. This is all about the mores of the time, the way lives were lived, the relationship between individuals and what they had to do to get by; to remain in their expected roles or to break out and reinvent themselves. Love, loyalty, duty, the church; it's all there. Some reviewers didn't enjoy Edna O'brien reading her own work. It worked for me; some of the unusual pronunciations and the sound of breath during pauses seemed to add to the simplicity of the book.

Evocative and beautifully written.

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the book should have been narrated by a young woman, but a good authentic story

book should have been narrated by a young woman

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I am glad that Edna O'Brien narrated the book as I think she did an excellent job. I was taken back in time to an old Ireland a world far apart from anywhere I had been to before. I did travel around a part of Ireland back in the 1970's and I remember how old fashioned and how narrow their world was. Yet to go back even further in time you can imagine how life would have been for young people and how confined they must have felt. Of the three books I really think this one is the best. I went onto listen to the others but the last one was quite disappointing.

Interesting and worth a listen

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Fabulous story, but Edna O’Brien’s voice is so wrong for it. A real shame as it puts me off listening to the rest of the trilogy.

Authors should not read there own books

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Loved that this gave an insight into a time in Ireland’s history, when girls and women were treated in a less than equal way.

Also gave me personal insight into a time when my mother would’ve been a young girl growing up in Ireland

Very true to its time & treatment of young girls & women

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Where does The Country Girls rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

My first audiobook, so nothing to compare but i loved it. Got it for long car journey in India, quite surreal listening and being enveloped in Ms O'Brians Irish lilt and soft atmosphere while seeing the colourful expanse of Indian life, especially in Delhi stuck in a traffic jam.

What did you like best about this story?

Her voice, the characters were very real to me

Which character – as performed by Edna O'Brien – was your favourite?

I loved both the girls

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

?

Beautiful, evocative voice of Ms O'Brian

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Beautifully read and written by Edna. What a story. I was hanging off every beautifully crafted word. Made all the more poignant by Edna’s recent passing.

This was one of the best books I have ever listened to on audible!!

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