''The Little Red Chairs'' is a 2015 novel by Irish author
Edna O'Brien
Josephine Edna O'Brien (born 15 December 1930) is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short-story writer. Elected to Aosdána by her fellow artists, she was honoured with the title Saoi in 2015 and the "UK and Ireland Nobel" D ...
, who was 85 at the time of publication.
The novel is O'Brien's 23rd fictional publication.
The novel follows an imaginary Balkan war criminal, Dr. Vlad, as he interacts with women in an Irish village. The past actions of the main character closely resemble the war crimes of the Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadžić
Radovan Karadžić ( sr-cyr, Радован Караџић, ; born 19 June 1945) is a Bosnian Serb politician, psychiatrist and poet. He was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Criminal Tr ...
.
The title of the novel refers to a European theatre company's
performance art which commemorated his 11,541 victims with 11,541 red chairs.
Themes
Like much of O'Brien's earlier works, such as her famous ''
The Country Girls
''The Country Girls'' is a trilogy by Irish author Edna O'Brien. It consists of three novels: ''The Country Girls'' (1960), ''The Lonely Girl (''1962), and '' Girls in Their Married Bliss'' (1964). The trilogy was re-released in 1986 in a single ...
'', the novel views life through the eyes of girls and women in rural Ireland.
The novel explores "how women are punished for their sins, or suffer for their innocence", a theme used in several other of O'Brien's works.
She also explores the stories of immigrants. Dr. Vlad is an immigrant into the Irish community, and his relationship to the Irish natives is a dark-comic focus.
Even before he arrives on the scene, O'Brien has populated the town with other resident workers from Poland, Burma and Czechoslovakia.
She also explores the story of immigration to the city of London, where she examines details in the "shadow of warfare and forced emigration", digging into the backgrounds of individual people "patiently bring
ngto life the stories and histories, the terrors and hopes of London’s population of exiles, immigrants, and indentured visitors."
Style
James Wood of ''The New Yorker'' describes the narration of the novel as "a loose and chatty
free indirect discourse
Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech; it is also referred to as free indirect discourse, free indirect style, or, in ...
, edging comically (in good Irish literary fashion) toward
stream of consciousness
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver (physician), Daniel Ol ...
."
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Bla ...
likened the novel to
Joyce and
Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
in style,
and multiple critics call this style very effective.
Julie Myerson
Julie Myerson (born Julie Susan Pike; 2 June 1960) is an English author and critic. As well as fiction and non-fiction books, she formerly wrote a column in ''The Guardian'' entitled "Living with Teenagers", based on her family experiences. She ...
described the prose as "sly perfection" which "changes tense (sometimes within a single chapter) or slides out of one character’s headspace and – with an absolutely convincing logic all of her own – into another."
Critical reception
Reception of the novel was generally favourable. Novelist
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer.
Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...
called it “her masterpiece”.
''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' reviewer and novelist
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Bla ...
favorably described the novel as " boldly imagined and harrowing".
For Oates, the novel's subject could have lent itself to suspense, mystery or a thriller, instead O'Brien focuses the novel on "meditation and penance."
In ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' James Wood concludes that the novel is simply "remarkable".
Examining the novel in the context of her other works, Wood described the novel as a successful "late style" novel which witnesses her "impatience with formal or generic proprieties; a wild, dark humor; a fearlessness in assertion and argument; a tonic haste in storytelling, so that the usual ground-clearing and pacing and evidentiary process gets accelerated or discarded altogether, as if it were (as it so often can be) mere narrative palaver that is stopping us from talking about what really matters."
Several reviewers emphasized how the novel moves between different genres, expectations and styles of novel. ''Washington Post'' reviewer Ron Charles described the novel as "leav
ngone in humbled awe" because of O'Brien's "dexterity
ndher ability to shift without warning — like life — from romance to horror, from hamlet to hell, from war crimes tribunal to midsummer night’s dream."
NPR reviewer
Maureen Corrigan
Maureen Corrigan is an American author, scholar, and literary critic. She is the book critic on the NPR radio program ''Fresh Air'' and writes for the "Book World" section of ''The Washington Post''. In 2014, she wrote ''So We Read On'', a book ...
called the novel "one of her best and most ambitious novels yet" which is both "personal and political; charming and grotesque; a novel of manners and a novel of monsters."
Other reviewers gave high marks for the novel. ''The Guardian''
's
Julie Myerson
Julie Myerson (born Julie Susan Pike; 2 June 1960) is an English author and critic. As well as fiction and non-fiction books, she formerly wrote a column in ''The Guardian'' entitled "Living with Teenagers", based on her family experiences. She ...
"a truly gripping read."
She examines a number of striking features in the novel, but concludes that "The real genius of this novel – and I don’t use the word lightly – is to take us right up close to worlds that we normally only read about in newspapers, to make us sweat and care about them, and at the same time create something that feels utterly original, urgent, beautiful."
Another NPR reviewer, Annalisa Quinn also praised the novel, describing it as highlighting how "O'Brien captures an extraordinary and almost holy innerness in each of her characters, however minor, and then plants those characters amidst the terrible velocity, the terrible pull of world events." Reviewing the novel for the ''Financial Times'', Clair Messud describe the novel as "as lyrically arresting as ever, her vision as astute, and as delicate" yet at the same time striking for its strength of content: "interweaving of the near-mythical and the urgent present, and for its unflinching exploration of the complex and lasting effects of human brutality."
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Little Red Chairs, The
2015 Irish novels
Novels by Edna O'Brien
Faber and Faber books