{"id":624199,"date":"2026-09-14T08:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T08:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624199\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T08:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T08:48:12","slug":"compelling-and-unsettling-the-last-years-of-edna-obrien-by-her-son-carlo-gebler-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624199\/","title":{"rendered":"Compelling and unsettling: The Last Years of Edna O\u2019Brien by her son Carlo G\u00e9bler \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

No One Tells You: The Last Years of Edna O\u2019Brien <\/p>\n

Author: Carlo G\u00e9bler <\/p>\n

ISBN-13: 9781835940570 <\/p>\n

Publisher: New Island<\/p>\n

Guideline Price: \u20ac21.95; 224pp<\/p>\n

On July 27th, 2024, Edna O\u2019Brien<\/a> died in London at the age of 93. Over subsequent days, her funeral Mass in Tuamgraney, Co Clare, and burial afterwards on Holy Island, Lough Derg, received widespread media coverage; this newspaper published a four-page special literary supplement on Monday, July 29th. \u201cShe was a speaker of truth,\u201d said her funeral celebrant, Fr O\u2019Meara, a \u201cremarkable woman\u201d who \u201cheld up a mirror for us in a very narrow time in Ireland\u201d.<\/p>\n

This memoir, by her older son Carlo G\u00e9bler<\/a>, covers the final years of Edna\u2019s life, beginning in May 2020. It is, for a number of reasons, a surprising book; any expectations that this will be a \u201ctell it all\u201d account of what it was like to have a famous author mother are quickly dispersed, and the chronological coverage is somewhat jagged and uneven. <\/p>\n

Interested readers will find some of the wider familial story in Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Shea\u2019s recent documentary<\/a> Blue Road: The Edna O\u2019Brien Story, featuring memorable interviews with O\u2019Brien filmed not long before she died, as well as contributions by her two sons.<\/p>\n

Instead, what is offered here is a quiet, unflinching and moving reflection on watching a loved one age; a book that tells, in close-up focus, what it feels like to watch a parent weaken and to learn what \u201cno one tells you\u201d before. <\/p>\n

In his preface, G\u00e9bler recounts how the knowledge of his mother\u2019s impending death began to feel \u201clike a sore tooth to which the tongue keeps darting: it wouldn\u2019t let me alone\u201d and so \u201cI decided I should stick with the sore tooth. I would write about my experience of my mother\u2019s death. It was what I needed to do. Solipsistic of course, but it had to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Carlo G\u00e9bler on his mother Edna O\u2019Brien: Coming to the endOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

That solipsism is also an act of narrative generosity. The emotions he describes are familiar to very many, and his acknowledgment of them a source of solace. They range from helplessness to anger, through anxiety and worry, back to rage. And even more powerfully, the memoir evokes O\u2019Brien\u2019s rage against dying: \u201cShe would testify to the brutal truth and she did and terrible as it was to hear, it was also bracing. She wouldn\u2019t baulk; she would resist; she would cavil. Wasn\u2019t that the better way to face extinction, to say loudly over and over and over, \u2018No, no, no, it\u2019s hideous.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The hideousness of dying notwithstanding, G\u00e9bler\u2019s account of his mother\u2019s final years also brings some welcome humour. Reading lines like these \u2013 in which Edna O\u2019Brien\u2019s voice is still powerfully sharp, and thankfully so \u2013 one feels like cheering out loud: \u201cI hate emails, I fucking hate emails. I want them out of my fucking life. I want them abolished. I never want to see another fucking email for as long as I live, which won\u2019t be long. God grant me this wish \u2013 no more fucking emails for the time remaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only a narrative about a son and mother, this is definitely also a book about two writers and about the vital power of writing as a life force for them both. The early chapters feature some fascinating depictions of Edna O\u2019Brien\u2019s writing process. This is one example: \u201cWhen she worked with someone, she either read from handwritten sheets, changing what she had written as she read, or made it up on the spot without the aid of notes. She could dictate off the cuff and when she did, her voice had a strange, tranced, otherworldly quality.\u201d <\/p>\n

Other details convey the continuing impact of practical reality, including financial worries and the precarity of being a 90-year-old tenant, as well as O\u2019Brien\u2019s remarkable work ethic. Even in her last months she struggled to complete a book on TS Eliot. <\/p>\n

For the writing son, the last years have been times of watching \u2013 his mother and himself \u2013 and of painful learning: \u201cDeath, in this case (or do I mean her case?) I was coming to understand, was less an event than a series of incremental reductions, with one capacity after another being taken away until at last, you came to the end \u2013 extinction. And like some wretched formula I needed for an examination but could not keep hold of in my mind, I had to keep relearning this, again and bloody again.\u201d <\/p>\n

In February 2023 O\u2019Brien had a terrible fall, one consequence of which was that she could no longer live at home. Recounting the story of her fall to her son, she vigorously protested that \u201cNo one warns you about old age\u201d and \u201cNo one tells you that your body falls apart\u201d. In retrospect, he realises that the world\u2019s seeming failure to warn her adequately also left her free to rage against it. Now, his own decision to speak the truth, to warn and tell, makes for very compelling, if unsettling, reading. <\/p>\n

Margaret Kelleher is Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at UCD. Her biography of Mary and Padraic Colum is published this month by UCD Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No One Tells You: The Last Years of Edna O\u2019Brien Author: Carlo G\u00e9bler ISBN-13: 9781835940570 Publisher: New Island…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6489,265137,42232,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-624199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-book-reviews","tag-carlo-gebler","tag-edna-o-brien","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}