Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story review – richly bittersweet portrait of an Irish literary great
Her raw, sexually and emotionally frank prose made her a sensation and got the Irish Catholic church hot under the cassock. She was an eloquent wit, a provocateur who could hold her own in literary circles and in the glittering party circuit of 1960s London. It's now widely acknowledged that she was one of the greats of Irish literature. But the slightly bitter aftertaste left by this otherwise richly enjoyable documentary portrait of the writer Edna O'Brien comes from the decades of bullying and ridicule she had to endure before her talent was fully recognised.
Much of it originated uncomfortably close to home: Blue Road, which features interviews with the 93-year-old O'Brien shortly before her death last year, tells of her tumultuous marriage to fellow writer Ernest Gébler, who was not a man able to graciously accept the fact that his wife's success had eclipsed his own. Jessie Buckley reads excerpts from O'Brien's novels and diaries, capturing the music in her lifelong dance with language.
In UK and Irish cinemas
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