- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; First edition (12 Aug 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0297818066
- ISBN-13: 978-0297818069
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 16.4 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,576,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Controversial novel that challenges the moral standing of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
About the Author
Edna O'Brien is the author of 19 books. She was the winner of the 1993 Writers Guild Prize for Fiction. Her biography of James Joyce was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in June 1999. Her recent fiction has been about Irish topics - religion, politics, property. In 2001 her documentary novel, In the Forest - about a brutal murder on the west coast - caused a furore in her native Ireland. It was the subject of a BBC Omnibus film.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Too much emphasis on lyrical descriptions and a confusing structure spoilt a novel that had the potential to be fascinating.
It is based on the true story of a young girl who caused uproar in Ireland and the Catholic church because she wanted to travel to England for an abortion.
Mary is under 14 when her father rapes her and she concieves his child. Her bewilderment and shame are well described as the whole of Ireland gets involved in the case. Both the pro and anti abortion lobies are represented, although those advocating the baby's right to live are painted in an extreme and fairly unsympathetic light.
The other main character, the father, is a weak man; expert with animals and proud of his daughter, yet unable to curb his sexual needs. I didn't feel much sympathy for him, only anger.
The story was thought provoking, but I would not recommend the book because it lacked flow and 'readability'.
It is based on the true story of a young girl who caused uproar in Ireland and the Catholic church because she wanted to travel to England for an abortion.
Mary is under 14 when her father rapes her and she concieves his child. Her bewilderment and shame are well described as the whole of Ireland gets involved in the case. Both the pro and anti abortion lobies are represented, although those advocating the baby's right to live are painted in an extreme and fairly unsympathetic light.
The other main character, the father, is a weak man; expert with animals and proud of his daughter, yet unable to curb his sexual needs. I didn't feel much sympathy for him, only anger.
The story was thought provoking, but I would not recommend the book because it lacked flow and 'readability'.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I feel it's not too dramatic or extreme to say that in this book Edna O'Brien rewrites the history of women in Ireland. Based on a series of true incidents, the book tells the story of Mary, a 14 year-old girl who is raped by her father, becomes pregnant and ultimately finds herself the cause celebre of the whole country when a friend of the family tries to help her obtain an abortion in England. She is hounded by anti-abortionists, and the case goes all the way to the High Court of Ireland.
Down by the River mirrors the real events of a very similar case in almost hallucinogenic detail and it does so not by denouncing one side or the other, though the anti-abortionists are much the most strident and scarier faction, but by describing events with an almost wistful inevitability, the very opposite of the sensationalist scrum concocted by the media. For her pains, O'Brien's book was banned in Ireland. She had raised the question of how change might be brought about for women at the mercy of their biology, and of how a compassionate church could contemplate sustaining the status quo.
The book does the issue justice, telling a profound and deeply moving story with harrowing and courageous authenticity. Whichever side you are on regarding abortion, the novel asks questions of human morality, ethics and jurisprudence that are not easily answered.
Down by the River mirrors the real events of a very similar case in almost hallucinogenic detail and it does so not by denouncing one side or the other, though the anti-abortionists are much the most strident and scarier faction, but by describing events with an almost wistful inevitability, the very opposite of the sensationalist scrum concocted by the media. For her pains, O'Brien's book was banned in Ireland. She had raised the question of how change might be brought about for women at the mercy of their biology, and of how a compassionate church could contemplate sustaining the status quo.
The book does the issue justice, telling a profound and deeply moving story with harrowing and courageous authenticity. Whichever side you are on regarding abortion, the novel asks questions of human morality, ethics and jurisprudence that are not easily answered.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Deavastatingly Shocking Tale
9 Dec 2000
Format:Hardcover
They say the curse of the Irish is the drink. But to understand your own brutal, beautiful country as well as Edna O'Brien understands hers must be a bigger curse by far. There's no way a blessed person could have written a novel as shimmering, as ruthless and as devastating as "Down by the River": it's evidence of something more than mere talent, or even genius, at work. O'Brien's gifts are magnificent and terrifying, along the lines of stigmata and clairvoyance -- the kind of gifts that mark you.
Inspired by a case in Ireland, in which a 14-year-old rape victim was forbidden by the courts to leave the country to obtain an abortion, "Down by the River" is the story of Mary MacNamara. After being raped by her father, Mary conceives his child. A sympathetic neighbor brings her to England for an abortion, but the authorities haul them back, cowing them with their ugly threats. Mary refuses to name the baby's father, and her case becomes a cause that turns her own friends and neighbors against her. She's seen as both a villain and an object of sanctimonious condescension in the Catholic community.
That community's cruelty is the bitter, driving force of the book -- but it's Mary's suffering and loneliness that are at the heart of it. After a street musician befriends her (he lets her stay at his flat for a few days and buys her a cheap sweater), she writes him a letter: "I nearly died when you gave me that jumper. You shouldn't have. Turquoise is my favorite color. There are two kinds of alone, there's the kind which you are and the kind which I am. Your alone is beautiful, it's rich." It's a passage that takes you apart, the way a teenager's breathless enthusiasm is crushed by the young woman's overwhelming sense of fear and isolation.
O'Brien never takes the easy way out: not even Mary's father is painted as a monster. She describes how he helps birth a colt -- reaching into the mare's womb and coaxing it out by both brute strength and force of will, saving the mother's life in the process -- with such grace and tenderness that even against your will, you feel yourself almost, almost, growing to understand him.
But O'Brien doesn't hold back when it comes to her wrath at the Catholic Church, and at the small-minded Irish who slavishly follow it at the expense of their own humanity. O'Brien has lived in London for more than 20 years -- she isn't welcome in her own country, for obvious reasons -- and yet Ireland will never leave her. Her stories work on us exactly the way her homeland has worked on her. They can stare you down and tear you apart like a wolf -- and then, miraculously and tenderly, bring you back to life again, stronger and better than before. With "Down by the River," O'Brien marks us as well: it's the kind of book that takes days, maybe weeks, to shake.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Irish hypocrisy revealed
11 Feb 2003
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Mary McNamara's life in rural western Ireland is that of a typical young teenager until one day while she is on a walk on their land, her father violates the most sacred bond between parent and child and rapes her. Unable to tell anyone, she keeps the secret, except for her diary entries. When the abuse results in an unwanted pregnancy, it precipitates a national crises when she is taken to England for an abortion.
Based on real events, this novel accurately portrays how a Catholic nation can be inflamed over a cause such at this even while the morality of the citizens is in decline as evidenced by premarital sex, living in sin, affairs, and out of wedlock births.
While I enjoyed the story of Mary's plight, the novel itself was often times confusing with so many characters and shifts in focus so that after awhile you sort of lost track of who was who. By the end I was thinking it could have been told in a much more straightforward manner in less pages.
Mary's father, James, the obvious villan in this book, is a tragic figure. He seems a contradictory character, gentle with his livestock, proud of his daughter's accomplishments at school, and missing her presence, even while he violates her. Without a wife to serve his needs, it seems Mary is to fulfill that role on all counts. In the end it is hard to feel much more than pity for this pathetic nature.
Mary, for being all of fourteen, seems stronger than either of her parents in enduring the many hardhsips and allowing herself to be used by different fractions for their own purposes. It is hard to imagine what her life would be like afterwards, though the last pages try to give us a glimpse of her new life.
Based on real events, this novel accurately portrays how a Catholic nation can be inflamed over a cause such at this even while the morality of the citizens is in decline as evidenced by premarital sex, living in sin, affairs, and out of wedlock births.
While I enjoyed the story of Mary's plight, the novel itself was often times confusing with so many characters and shifts in focus so that after awhile you sort of lost track of who was who. By the end I was thinking it could have been told in a much more straightforward manner in less pages.
Mary's father, James, the obvious villan in this book, is a tragic figure. He seems a contradictory character, gentle with his livestock, proud of his daughter's accomplishments at school, and missing her presence, even while he violates her. Without a wife to serve his needs, it seems Mary is to fulfill that role on all counts. In the end it is hard to feel much more than pity for this pathetic nature.
Mary, for being all of fourteen, seems stronger than either of her parents in enduring the many hardhsips and allowing herself to be used by different fractions for their own purposes. It is hard to imagine what her life would be like afterwards, though the last pages try to give us a glimpse of her new life.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
One of the themes of the story.
11 Sep 1999
Format:Mass Market Paperback
In DOWN BY THE RIVER O'Brien one of the more prevalent themes is the treatment of Mary. When everyone finds out she has went to get an abortion, people automatically assume she is a tramp, and this O'Brien portrays how someone can become so set pregnancy is a result of her "wild youthful ways." in their veiws that you fail to gain the facts before rushing to a judgement. Few people bothered to ask Mary is this pregnancy was a result of bad judgement, or a result of someone else's forceful and abusvie actions. O'Brien didn't really the reader a deep insight to how Mary may have felt as the subject of this fierce national debate. It's almost like Mary wasn't allowed to feel, or she was afraid to feel scared, frightened, angry, ashamed, fearful. Few people bothered to find out how Mary felt, it was more about what she was going to or had already attempted to do. O'Brien portrays that the characters became more concerned with the issue itself, than with the person which the issue was about and her feelings.
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