The first time I went to the McInerny house I was very surprised.  AT THE NOISE.  It was chaos.  A dog running underfoot.  Everyone was talking to each other, the conversations sometimes yelled from one room of the house to the other.  Everything happening at once - simultaneous yelling, teasing, ignoring.  It was AWESOME and I wanted to be a McInerny.  I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this experience.  From everything I've heard, all the strangers that have entered into the McInerny household have felt pretty much the same.  That's why, when I asked Mrs. McInerny (also known to some of you as Margaret, Madge, or Meghan and Nora's mom) if she'd be willing to select the book, I knew that I would love whatever she chose.  It's my chance to be a McInerny.  At least until I'm done reading the book.

Please join Mrs. McInerny and me in reading Country Girls by (the fabulous) Edna O'Brien.


Mrs. McInerny tells me that she first started reading short stories by Edna O'Brien when they were featured in The New Yorker and was "terrifically moved".  Later, she had the pleasure of hearing her speak when she came through Minneapolis as part of the Talking Volumes series.

First published in 1975 and again in paperback in 2002, it appears to me that this book may be hard to find.  I didn't find it available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble in either it's single volume edition or as a three-story book.  It also was unavailable through my local library, but I was able to have it brought in from another library in the state.  Possibly yours (sorry about that).

A book about two young Irish girls who spent their childhood together in a convent school.  The girls leave for the big city in search of life and love, struggling to maintain their relationship.  Their lives take unexpected turns, each searching to find their own way.

Two reviews from people we don't know:
“I bought this book preparatory to a month in Ireland, as a mental/political exercise (aware of former banning). I couldn't put it down, and got three hours or less sleep for three nights in a row. I foisted it on my mom with warnings not to begin it on a weeknight, she got hooked on a Tuesday and went downhill too. We talked for days about how tightly written it was, how clean, spare, descriptive, full of foreshadowing, and painful to any woman who knows what it is to be centrally disappointed by a man. Yet the book never whines, it never pushes itself sobbing on your shoulder. It sits in dignity with sadness.

Very quietly and methodically tragic, in the Irish way that says you do not whine about tragedy, you do not make fuss of it, you just simply pray a bit and go on. What makes the book so very valuable and unusual is that it applies the Irish knack for storytelling and forthright 'un-tragic' tragedy to women's lives and women's stories. It is both an Irish book full of water and woodsmoke, and a women's book in all its painful honesty and revelatory grace."

- and -

"Entertaining, sad, funny, and all too real. It's one of those novels were the character’s don't leave you after you put the book down."

For this month's wine pairing, I also turned to Mrs. McInerny for advice.  "Guinness, the Irish wine" she told me.  "Definitely."

So, search your local used book store, trek on over to the library, find your place in the queue.  This month, become immersed in the lives of Kate and Baba and do what the McInerny's are doing.