BOOK REVIEW
The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien
The Little Red Chairs has been sitting on my TBR shelf for a while now because I planned to read Edna O’Brien’s more famous Country Girls Trilogy first. But I was daunted by tackling a trilogy, so decided to start with this shorter, more recent book. I’m still recovering!O’Brien published The Little Red Chairs in 2015, when she was 85 years old. I’ve read her autobiography, but this is the first novel of hers I read. I didn’t have any expectations about the book, but I sure wasn’t expecting such a gut punch.
The Little Red Chairs is the story of a charismatic stranger who moves to an Irish village. He sets up shop as a “healer” and becomes immediately popular, offering herbs, tinctures, poetry, hot stone massages, nutrition advice, and smoldering good looks. So far, the story is charming and even a little funny, giving almost Maeve Binchy vibes. Things get a bit racy when he has an affair with the local beauty.
Then, WHAM-O! Things get really dark, really fast. It turns out the charming stranger is an evil war criminal, responsible for the death and rape of hundreds during the Bosnian war. O’Brien vividly depicts the war and its violence. But it is when that violence follows “Dr. Vlad” to Ireland that the story is almost too horrible to read.
I have struggled with my reaction, wondering if the story was more effective for me because it involved one Irish woman instead of hundreds of nameless Bosnian women. I know it is human nature to respond with greater empathy to one, specific person we know (even if only as a character in a book) than to a generalized horror happening to a large number of unknown people. O'Brien, like all good storytellers, understands this and uses it to great advantage. But she could have told the story of a particular Bosnian woman and she chose not to. Instead, the victim was in Ireland, which made me think about how I responded viscerally to an attack on an English-speaking, middle class, Irish woman much more than I did to the descriptions of violence against the "foreign" Bosnians in whom I did not recognize myself. That made me think and I'm still mulling it over.
There is more to the book. Much more. The story moves on to London and its immigrant community, then to a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Much of it was a tough read, but excellently executed. And it has a hopeful, if not happy ending. This one will stick with me for a long, long time. I consider it a Must Read.
Have you read The Little Red Chairs? What did you think?
There is more to the book. Much more. The story moves on to London and its immigrant community, then to a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Much of it was a tough read, but excellently executed. And it has a hopeful, if not happy ending. This one will stick with me for a long, long time. I consider it a Must Read.
Have you read The Little Red Chairs? What did you think?
NOTES
If you have reviewed The Little Red Chairs and would like me to share your review, please send me a link in a comment and I will list it here.
This was my first book for the 2025 European Reading Challenge. I am counting it as my Bosnia books (technically Bosnia and Herzegovina), although I could count it as my Ireland book. But I know I will read other Ireland books but doubt I will find another Bosnia book this year.
