August is Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien – By @Benedicttatham
By Benedict Tatham
August is Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien.
Over the holidays we were asked to read a book we wouldn’t normally read. I decided to take it upon myself to better understand the mind of a woman.
With a girlfriend myself and the reality that my time spent with her is increasingly needed to be sacrificed for the course, it was the perfect excuse to be seen reading a book entitled “August is a Wicked Month” by Edna O’Brien with a lonely looking women on the front.
Apparently it’s actually quite well known….The title is regularly referenced to this day by commentators on topics ranging from business and politics to fashion and weather!
Upon publication in 1965 it was banned in several jurisdictions, including by Ireland’s strict Catholic rulers for it’s raciness – I hear you say, “Hhhmm I wasn’t going to read the rest of this but now I’m kinda interested.”
Anyway lets get into the mind of women and stop messing around.
Ellen is the lead character and it starts off when her husband takes their son on a camping trip through Wales – they are fading apart hence why she’s not joining them.
After a year of separation from her husband and longer than that without a man, she now wants to get laid as soon as possible and preferably more than once.
Previously she had a brief and shattering affair in London. Ellen goes to the Riviera to reconnect herself, to lie in the only way she feels is left, to attain that harshly promoted goal of “pleasure trips” for the lonely, the sexual “adventure.”
A comedy of errors follows and she eventually comes home after rather tragic circumstances (I won’t ruin it for you).
However, I can tell you that the author sums up a convincingly attractive, intelligent, physically conscious woman, who, in unhappy love or out of love, seeks authenticity in herself and others, after a separating from her husband and distancing herself subsequently from her boy; the two most important things she realises are in her life.
It’s actually a good read and I would recommend it to anyone – gentlemen, the secrets lie within.
