Edna O'Brien Bears Witness To Horror In 'Girl'
O'Brien's 19th novel is based on the real story of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist group Boko Haram in 2014. It's a painful and essential read that ends on a hopeful yet realistic note.
Girl, the newest novel from Edna O'Brien, starts out with one of the most powerful passages the legendary Irish author has ever written. "I was a girl once, but not any more," the narrator, Maryam, says. "I smell. Blood dried and crusted all over me, and my wrapper in shreds. My insides, a morass. Hurtled through this forest that I saw, that first awful night, when I and my friends were snatched from the school."
The paragraph serves, inspired by the 2014 mass kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by the jihadist group Boko Haram, is a stunning novel that forces us to confront one of the more shocking events of recent years. It's a painful read, but an absolutely essential one.
