Edna O’Brien, a talented Irish prose writer whose novels and stories – the realistic images of love’s loss can be called all her heroines, their tragic fates, their passion-laded destinies – are legendary in their gloomy and emphatic darkness, passed away on Saturday. She was 93.

Her passing was first revealed on social media by her publisher, Faber, that she had passed on after a long illness in which, in the recent past, she had opened up about cancer.

Edna O’Brien Quick Overview

Edna O’Brien Early Life

Josephine Edna O’Brien was born on 15 December 1930 to Michael O’Brien, a farmer, and Lena Cleary at Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland, a place she referred to as ‘fervid’ and ‘enclosed’. The family resided at Drewsborough, which was a large two-story house in which her mother continued living in a semi-grand style. 

About Michael O’Brien, whose tale comes from a family that was once rich in land as well as fortune; though the family house was lost to the family primarily through mismanagement by those who inhabited it, the main subject of the story had in his possession a thousand acres or more and a fortune from rich uncles to boot, and yet he turned out to be a profligate a drunkard who squandered his fortune in alcoholic or traded to settle the account.

Her Personal Life

In 1954, O’Brien eloped with the Irish writer Ernest Gébler, who passed away in 1998. Ernest and Edns had a stormy relationship that was against her parents’ wishes, and they settled down in London. They had two sons, Sasha, an architect who resides in London, and Carlo Gebler. The couple divorced in 1964, which became a high-profile separation due to the husband’s involvement with another woman.

Ernest at first thought that he was the rightful owner of her success because he helped her become a better writer; towards the end, he thought he wrote O’Brien’s books. Carlo’s frank comments about his parents’ relationship with Celebrity Brink, a show in 2009, disclosed that his mother and father had serious fights over her achievements.