I don’t tend to write about the lives of authors, but I can’t help note that Edna O’Brien died today, aged 93, because I have found to be a peer among great Irish writers (and writers of any nation)–including Joyce and Beckett–ever since I read her novel Casualties of Peace. I picked it up at random in a used book store and read it in one sitting, surprised and delighted by its sophisticated technique and surprising plot. I then devoured most of her novels, my favourite being A Pagan Place, on which I have published an article. O’Brien is often described as a “chronicler of women’s lives,” and while this description isn’t inaccurate, it utterly fails to touch on what makes O’Brien so exciting: her style and experimentalism. It’s less flashy than Joyce or Beckett, but she was a stylist of the top tier. Her experimental novel Night is no less compelling than her more (melo)dramatic fare, like The Wild Decembers.