Product Description

IN THE FOREST, set in the west of Ireland, is the story of a young man who shoots dead three people in a forest glade. The young man, Mich O'Kane, is 'not all there in the head' as one character puts it. By puberty he is already committing petty crimes, ending up in borstal. By the time he is back home he has also served time in a British jail and is an institutionalised criminal. His sexual fantasies - revolving around women in the village - eventually centre on Eily, an artist and single mother, who lives with her son Maddie. One day Mich pounces, and orders Eily to drive them to the woods nearby...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #247954 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
"In the Forest", set in the west of Ireland, is the story of a young man who shoots dead three people in a forest glade. The young man, Mich O'Kane, is 'not all there in the head' as one character puts it. By puberty, he is already committing petty crimes, ending up in borstal. By the time he is back home he has also served time in a British jail and is an institutionalised criminal. His sexual fantasies - revolving around women in the village - eventually centre on Eily, an artist and single mother, who lives with her son Maddie. One day Mich pounces, and orders Eily to drive them to the woods nearby...

About the Author
Edna O'Brien is the author of 19 books. She was the winner of the 1993 Writers' Guild Prize for Fiction. Her biography of James Joyce was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in June 1999. Her recent fiction has been about Irish to;pic - religion, politics, property. In 2001 her documentary novel, In the Forest - about a brutal murder on the west coast - caused a furore in her native Ireland. It was the subject of a BBC Omnibus film.

Customer Reviews

Gripping from the start
Based on true events where a young mother, her child and a local priest were brutally slain in Ireland, In the Forest tells the story of a perturbed young man, who has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions and prison.
O'Brien skilfully paints the picture of a lonely child, seriously distraught after his mother's death, whose wild actions start as pranks but become more serious as he grows into manhood, until he commits the ultimate crime. By revealing the perpetrator's background and life experience the reader is somewhat forced to view him perhaps not with sympathy, but certainly as a human being.
I could not put this book down. Reading it was rewarding for its beautiful and remarkable prose, but it was first and foremost agonizing, as I could not help feeling horrified, distraught and sad at the victims' agonizing deaths.

Creepy but great characterisation
I found the first chapter a bit disturbing, how it was written but you relaly got a sense of why Kinderschrek became the sort of deranged individual he became. I felt so sorry for him, and the disappointments he had to deal with in his life, it was heartbreaking to read all that rejection and cruelty. His menace was so well depicted and his mounting frustration and obsession almost claustraphobic. The other characters were believable and the tension built nicely. Overall I found it a depressing tale of a suppressed community. Very believable and opressive.

Dark Beauty
This was the first book I had read by Edna O' Brien and it was sensational. Chapters in first person interchange with those in third person. The first person is not always the same character. This makes for a clever and enjoyable read. The subject matter is very dark but the cleverness of the writing keeps you engrossed. I have subsequently read more of her books but this one is outstanding