07/08/2019
The harrowing story of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 provides the foundation of this emotional novel from O’Brien (The Little Red Chairs ). Maryam, who narrates in a taut first person, is brutally ripped from her school in Nigeria, along with her classmates, and taken to a detention camp, where they are treated like cattle. Maryam has a child with a reckless fellow prisoner named Mahoud. Later, the chaos from an air attack allows her and her daughter to escape along with her friend Buki, but this is far from the end of her troubles. Days of starvation and exhaustion end when they take refuge in a remote outpost near a village, where they lay low for awhile before being embraced and nurtured by the women who live there. But when it’s learned that the villagers are “hiding a militant’s wife and child,” they are shunned and Maryam is forced to leave, splitting up from Buki. She goes to a military post, where she is mistaken for a suicide bomber and ends up being interviewed by authorities, which goes horribly wrong. O’Brien captures the intensity and urgency of Maryam’s plight with measured, evocative prose that often reads like poetry. She succeeds in putting a personal face on an international tragedy. (Sept.)
Named a Best Book of 2019 by the BBC, Evening Standard , and The Sunday Times NPR Girl is a masterful study of human evil by a writer who, at 88, is still getting better. It will blast you with its searing, savage beauty." —Christina Patterson, The Times (UK)The Atlantic The Irish Times Girl is immensely painful to read." —Francine Pose, The New York Times Book Review Girl is [Edna O'Brien's] 19th novel and she has intimated that it may be her last. It may yet prove to be her most powerful." —Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian Kirkus Reviews Publishers Weekly The Washington Post People Girl is told in a prose so butter-smooth and sprueless it seems to have fallen fully-formed from O’Brien’s pen. The book’s sudden outbursts of stomach-turning violence come like speed bumps in the greater purl, made more jolting and haunting still by the terrible, clear-eyed maturity of the writing. It’s a sort of tight-rope act O’Brien seems to be performing, strung between the stream-like nature of her prose and the painful shards of her story."—Bailey Trela, Ploughshares O Magazine Girl is a riveting story of the unbreakable bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters." —Esquire Ann Beattie Marina Carr Girl is a courageous book about a courageous spirit.” —J. M. Coetzee Girl is a novel of profound and ever-renewing empathy and grace—a parable on the complex subject of human redemption. Its verbal funds are clear and transporting and unforgettable; its dramatic resources vast.” —Richard Ford Ian McKellen
Narrator Sheila Atim sets a sensitive yet emphatic tone for this harrowing story of violence, loss, and survival. She becomes Maryam, a Nigerian girl who is abducted by the infamous militant Boko Haram. Atim brings listeners to tears as we hear the many violations Maryam must endure—and then makes us hang on breathlessly to see whether her incredible bid for freedom will succeed. Listeners will be enveloped in this emotional listening experience as Atim makes us feel the ultimate betrayal of Maryam's failed reunion with her family, who don't know what to do with a rape survivor who has given birth to child of her abductor. This is a powerful volume that may best be listened to in intervals. M.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile
★ 2019-06-17
Opening with a nighttime raid that recalls Boko Haram's 2014 abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, O'Brien (The Little Red Chairs , 2015, etc.) lets one victim, named Maryam, tell her story. In a jungle camp, their captors bombard the girls with prayers, edicts, and hatred. The militants rape them repeatedly. In the Blue House, there is "a long corridor with cubicles leading off it and in each one an iron bed and a naked bulb dangling down." The prettiest girls are sold to wealthy men in Arabia. Others are given as brides to men who excel in battle. Such is Maryam's lot, and when she has a baby, it's suddenly clear how long her ordeal has been. Then, only 60 pages in, she escapes. But O'Brien withholds hope, opening her heroine's world to new perils and despair. Maryam endures starvation and a friend's death on a jungle trek with her baby that fuels tension as recapture seems inevitable. She even abandons her Babby, but some women from a herding community find and return her. They share their village and rich culture with Maryam. There she realizes her presence as a jihadi's wife is a threat to her hosts. Reunited with her mother and feted by the government, Maryam learns of the stigma attached to a jihadi wife's child and she is separated from Babby. Throughout the post-escape narrative, O'Brien uses every opportunity to insert songs, tales, myths, and rituals of the country, deeply enriching a story and a character that were already memorable. She also brings to the fore the complex relations and supportive roles of women in a novel largely blighted by males. Long associated with Ireland, O'Brien might spark questions of cultural appropriation with this excursion to Africa. But she has always dealt with women's oppression as her thematic palette has expanded over the years, with her previous novel combining Balkan war crimes and the global refugee crisis.
A heartbreaking tale and a singular achievement.
