The Country Girls

Reading the blurb of The Country Girls, I was sure I knew what I was getting into. It would be like Love in a Cold Climate- a fun boo about teenage girls growing up and finding love, or heartbreak.  Then the protagonist's mother died in the first few chapters and she was removed from the care of her drunken and abusive father and I accepted that I might be wrong.  Except I wasn't.  Not entirely.  There are aspects of that in Edna O'Brien's novel, but there's also a fair amount of darkness and angst.

As I mentioned, Caithleen Brady's mother dies the day she finds out that she has been awarded a scholarship to a fancy nun-school.  Soon she and best friend Baba are off to stay in the strict convent, stripped of all the luxuries of home.  It's all very A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, really.  Anyway, the pair eventually get kicked out and, rather than returning to their provincial home town for good, hotfoot it to Dublin in search of independence and love.  

I really enjoyed this book.  Baba and Cait are funny and relatable- even if Baba is, essentially, a cow.  Baba  is rich and pretty, while Cait has to rely on her wits to get by.  Cait follows Baba into mischief even when she'd rather be sensible- she tries to flirt by discussing James Joyce while Baba encourages men to buy them expensive drinks.  It's a friendship pattern that I think most women would recognise from being young.  Pretty much everyone has (or had) a friend who is a terrible influence- and terribly fun.

I also liked its darkness.  Cait, for all her cleverness and sensibility, is terribly naive.  Her main love interest through the book is the dubiously named Mr Gentleman.  Naturally, he is anything but and starts courting Cait shortly after her mother dies.  He is married and she is fourteen at the time.  Rather than seeing this as a fairly textbook case of grooming (which it certainly is) Cait falls for it hook, line and sinker.  Cait is a character who is so desperate for the ideal love that she latches on to the first man she meets who appears to embody it, regardless of the age difference.  Mr Gentleman's obvious inappropriateness and the fact that he is clearly taking advantage of her, removes the comedy of Cait's naivety.  She is a swooning maiden being led into a trap laid by a predator who showers her with gifts and insists she keep their love a secret. 

I am not sure why I enjoyed this book so very much.  Yes, I see flashes of my teenaged self in both Baba and Cait but that doesn’t explain it entirely. It sounds cheap to say, but it was nice to read something that was easy.  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was nice to read and everything but fuck me did it take some mental effort.  So many of the books on The List seem to be just like that and so it’s nice to find one that is simple and enjoyable without the effort of trying to remember your Shakespeare or Greek classics that you probably never learned to begin with.  It may have a fair amount of God in it, but thankfully a working knowledge of the Bible isn’t essential to enjoy The Country Girls.