The High Road

Love and tragedy converge in a seaside town in The High Road , a newly reissued novel from Edna O'Brien, the author of Girl and "one of the most celebrated writers in the English language" (NPR's Weekend Edition ) This richly peopled, compellingly readable novel explores the many lives of women-as mystic, mother, daughter, and lover. There is Iris, with her "winsome wonsome" ways, no longer young; there is Charlotte, a troubled debutante who has fled from society; and there is the narrator, Anna, who feels that her emotional life has folded until she meets a young Spanish girl named Catalina. Set in a seaside enclave on the Mediterranean coast, The High Road is a passionate account of lost love and the return to loving, where currents of regret and loneliness clash with a fiery instinct for survival.