Her novels and short stories often explored the lives of willful women who loved men who were crass, unfaithful or already married.
Edna O’Brien, the prolific Irish author whose evocative and explicit stories of loves lost earned her a literary reputation that matched the darkly complex lives of her tragic heroines, died on Saturday. She was 93.
Her death was announced on social media by her publisher, Faber, which said only that she had died “after a long illness.” She had spoken in recent years about being treated for cancer.
Ms. O’Brien wrote dozens of novels and short-story collections over almost 60 years, starting in 1960 with “The Country Girls,” a book that dealt with the emotional conflicts of two Irish girls who rebel against their Roman Catholic upbringing.
Her books often depicted willful but insecure women who loved men who were crass, unfaithful or already married. Much of her early work carried aspects of autobiography, which stirred whisperings about her morals and led to personal attacks against her back home in Ireland.When her writing was first published, she was considered a literary pioneer whose distinctive style gave voice to women whose passions had never been portrayed with such honesty.
“I learned from her,” the American novelist Mary Gordon once said, “particularly her way of writing about the intensity and danger of childhood. She has described a kind of girl’s life that hadn’t been talked about before.”
But the boldness of her writing never endeared her to the women’s rights movement, which disliked her evocation of hard luck singles and desperate mistresses. Ms. O’Brien took the rejection in stride.
“I don’t feel strongly about the things they feel strongly about,” she once said, referring to women’s rights advocates. “I feel strongly about childhood, truth or lies, and the real expression of feeling.”
For decades, her work was more highly praised outside Ireland than in her homeland, which she left for good in the 1960s. With her auburn hair, green eyes and Irish country lilt, she was seen by non-Irish critics as the embodiment of Ireland itself. But in Ireland, her persona struck many as too rich to be real. (The Irish literary critic Denis Donoghue called her “stage Irish.”)
