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Life
| 1948-97; b. Dublin; dg. Conor Cruise O’Brien [q.v.] and Christine [née] Foster; baptised Catholic but educated in Protestant schools, Rathgar Junior School and Park House, Rathfarnham, and Trinity College, Dublin, TCD (grad. BA 1972); passed some adolescent years in New York where here father occupied the Albert Schweitzer Chair of Humanities (NYU); her first story, “Henry Died”, concerned the loss of a beloved older friend and mentor, appeared in New Irish Writing (ed. David Marcus) in the Irish Press, and won the Hennessy Award, 1971; m. Joseph Kearney, 1971 with whom a son Alexander, 1974, living at 26, Charleston Ave, Ranelagh; issued A Gift Horse and Other Stories (Poolbeg 1978), becoming the fourth winner of the Rooney Prize, 1979; served as columnist in Irish Independent; issued The Homesick Garden (1991), a novel; succeeded Jo Donoghue as literary editor of Poolbeg Press; ed., If Only (Dublin: Poolbeg 1997); extended the Poolbeg fiction list drawing on new talents whom she strongly encouraged; resisted dictation from Patricia Scanlon, the leading author on the Poolbeg list; Kate died suddenly, of brain haemorrhage in mid-conversation with London publisher Penny Hoare, March 1997; a memorial service was conducted at Trinity College Chapel. DIW DIL ATT |
Works
A Gift Horse and Other Stories (Poolbeg 1978); If Only (Dublin: Poolbeg [q.d.]). Also “Losing”, in Stories by Contemporary Irish Women, ed. Daniel J. Casey & Linda M. Casey (Syracuse UP 1990), pp.137-43 - in which the protagonist is taken on as History teacher at a small Protestant girls’ school.
Contributions incl. “Henry Died”, in Best Irish Short Stories, 2, ed. David Marcus (1977) [with stories by Clare Boylan, Ita Daly, Jennifer Johnston, Maeve Kelly, John McGahern, Gillman Noonan, William Trevor and others.]
Anthologies
If Only, ed., Kate Cruise O’Brien & Mary Maher (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1997), 314pp. CONTENTS: Ivy Bannister, “What big teeth”; Sheila Barrett, “Ellie’s ring”; Maeve Binchy, “Taxi-men are invisible”; Mary Rose Callaghan, “Windfalls”; Kate Cruise O’Brien, “Breaking”; Ita Daly, “Do the decent thing”; Margaret Dolan, “A girl like you”; Mary Dorcey, “The orphan”; Mary Gordon, “Bishop’s house”;] Katy Hayes, “The facts of life”; Jennifer Johnston, “Son, moon and stars”; Marian Keyes, “Late opening at the Last Chance Saloon”; Mary Leland, “Commencement”; Liz McManus, “Dwelling below the skies”; Mary Maher, “Lucy’s story”; Mary Morrissy, “Clods”; Mary O’Donnell, “Passover”; Patricia Scanlan, “Ripples”; Gaye Shortland, “Polygamy”.
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Criticism
Patricia Craig, review of A Gift Horse and Other Stories, in New York Review of Books (8 Oct. 1981) [online]; ‘Kate Cruise O’Brien: Fiction Finder’ [interview], in Books Ireland (Dec. 1997), p.323.
See also John Boland’s remarks on O’Brien’s editorial insistence that the novelist Mary McCarthy take “the gloom out of her novel” - under McCarthy [supra].
John Boland takes Poolbeg to task for the plethora of new novels, and ridicules the authors’ blurbs on the covers; recounts how Mary McCarthy, 45, writes the gloom out of her novel at the behest of the editor Kate Cruise O’Brien, and ponders what would have happened to McGahern, Banville, et al., at the same hands; admits to not having read the new titles. (The Irish Times, 15 June 1996, ‘Weekend’, p.8.)
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References
A. N. Jeffares & Anthony Kamm, eds., An Irish Childhood, An Anthology (Collins 1987) incls. Childhood episode [shortstory] cited.
Quotations
The Homesick Garden (1990), ‘Oh sense,’ said Grace scornfully, taking a sip of her wine. ‘How much of anyone’s emotional life makes sense? I did want to get pregnant. And Brian talked about having babies all the time. He said he wanted to marry me and he wanted to have children. He said he had a very high IQ ... I didn’t want to marry him. In fact I’ve never wanted to marry anybody ... I don’t think that I’ve ever met a married woman whom I envied or wanted to be like. I’m not good at compromises and I don’t [know] if I could manage the sheer stickiness of marriage, all those gluey guilty feelings wrapping around your skin.’ (p.133.)
Notes
Desmond Fennell, ‘Nation of Navel-gazers?’ [letter to the editor], Books Ireland (Nov. 1994), p.290, complains about the unwillingness of Irish publishers to print anything but Irish-subject books, precluding Irish travel writing, and reports that Kate Cruise O’Brien regards it as inadvisable to put a further foreign travel book on their lists [at Poolbeg].
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