In the Forest

In the Forest is a newly reissued edition of the terrifying novel from "one of the greatest writers in the English-speaking world" (The New York Times), Edna O'Brien."O'Brien brings together the earthy and delicately poetic: she has the sound of Molly Bloom and the skills of Virginia Woolf." - NewsweekIn The Forest returns to the countryside of western Ireland, the vivid backdrop of Edna O'Brien's best-selling Wild Decembers. Here O'Brien unravels a classic confrontation of evil and innocence centring on the young, troubled Michael O'Kane, christened by his neighbour's "the Kindershrek," someone of whom small children are afraid. O'Kane loses his mother as a boy and by age ten is incarcerated in a juvenile detention centre, an experience that leaves him scarred from abuse and worse, with the killing instinct buried within. "O'Brien (Wild Decembers, 2001, etc.) offers a grimly fascinating portrait of a young Irish psychopath, delivered in a flat and unaffected prose reminiscent of a police dossier... At once rich and chilling: one of O’Brien’s darkest, most accomplished works in years." - Kirkus ReviewsA story based on actual events, In The Forest, proceeds in a rush of hair-raising episodes and asks what will become of O'Kane's unwitting victims - a radiant young woman, her little son, and a devout and trusting priest. Riveting, frightening, and brilliantly told, this intimate portrayal of both perpetrator and victims reminds us that anything can happen "outside the boundary of mother and child." O'Brien has long been drawn to stories from real-life in modern Ireland. In this novel she is inspired by the murders of Imelda Riney, her son Liam and the Catholic priest Father Joe Walsh. As with her past three novels, she describes a story of tragedy.