Excerpt from The Love Object by Edna O'Brien, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

At the harbor she lifts her dress off shyly, and then with considerable shame she reaches for her water wings. They are blue plastic and they carry a flagrant advertisement for a suntan lotion. Standing there in the water is a boy of about eighteen holding a football and letting out the most unseemly and guttural sounds. He is a simpleton. She can tell by the way he stares. She tries to ignore him, but sees the ball come towards her as she makes her intrepid passage through the water. The ball hits her shoulder, so she loses her balance, wobbles, and takes a second to stand up straight again. The simpleton is staring at her and trying to speak, a foam of spittle on his lips. Drawing off her wings, she looks into the distance, pretending that she is not aware of him. He moves towards her, puts a hand out and tries in vain to catch hold of her, but she is too quick. She hurries out of the water, positions herself against a rock, and cowers inside a huge brown fleecy towel. He follows. He is wearing a chain around his neck, attached to it a silver medal with a blue engraving of the Virgin Mary. His skin is mahogany color. He comes close to her and is trying to say something or suggest something, and trembling inside the big brown towel, she tells him in his language to go away, to get lost. "Vamoose," she says, and flicks the back of her hand to confirm that she is serious. Then one of the local women yells abuse at him and he goes off silently into the water, tossing the ball to no one in particular.

At home, forcing herself to have lunch, Eileen begins to admit the gravity of things. She realizes now that Mark and Penny have left. She pictures them looking at a cheap room on some other part of the island, or perhaps buying a tent and deciding to sleep on the beach. On her plate colonies of ants are plundering the shreds of yellow and pink flesh that have adhered to a peach pit, and their assiduousness is so utter that she has to turn away.

She hurries out, takes a short cut across a field, through some scrubland to the little white church on the hill. It is like a beehive, and she thinks, as she goes towards it, that somehow her anguish will lessen once she gets inside, once she kneels down and prostrates herself before her Maker. The door is locked yet she tries turning the black iron knob in every direction. She walks around to find that the side door is also locked, and then, attempting to climb the pebble wall in order to look in the window, she loses her grip halfway and grazes her knee. She looks apologetically in case she has been seen, but there is no one there. There is simply a ragged rosemary bush and some broken bottles — the relics of a recent binge. She breaks off a few sprigs of rosemary to put in their bedroom.

"I am doing things as if they are coming back," she says as she searches for wildflowers. Walking down from the chapel she is again assailed by the sight of children, children refreshed from their siestas, pedaling furiously on tricycles and bicycles, children on a rampage through the street, followed by a second gang with feathers in their hair, wielding bows and arrows. Mindlessly she walks, and her steps carry her away from the town towards a wood. It is a young wood and the pine trees have not grown to any reasonable height, but their smell is pleasant and so is the rustle of the russet needles. She listens from time to time for a chorus of birds but realizes that there are none and hears instead the distant sough of the sea. Some trees have withered, are merely gray, shorn stumps, dry and leafless. They remind her of her anger and once again she recalls last night's scene, that snapshot glued to her retina.


Three youths on motorcycles enter the wood and come bounding across as if intent on destroying themselves and every growing thing. They are like a warring clan, and they shout as they come towards her. She runs into a thicket and, crouching, hides under the trees out of their sight. She can hear them shouting and she thinks that they are calling to her, and now on hands and knees she starts to crawl through the underbrush and make her way by a hidden route back to the town. Scratches do not matter, nor does the fact that her clothing is ripped; her one concern is to get back among people, to escape their ravages and her escalating madness. It is while she is making her way back that the light changes and the young trees begin to sway, like pliant branches. A wind has risen and in the town itself the houses are no longer startling white but a dun color, like houses robbed of their light. Dustbin lids are rolling along the street and not a child or an adult is in sight. All have gone indoors to avoid the storm. On the water itself boats are like baubles, defenseless against the brewing storm. On the terrace, the canvas chairs have fallen over, and so, too, has her little wooden clotheshorse with its tea towels. As she crosses to retrieve them the umbrella table keels forwards and clouts her. Her mind can jump to only one conclusion — she sees Mark and Penny in a sailboat, Penny exclaiming, Mark jumping and tugging at the sails, trying in vain to steer them to safety. She does not know where Penny's parents live and at once runs to their bedroom to look for her passport. The beautiful childlike face that looks out at her from the passport photograph seems to be speaking to her, begging, asking for clemency. She sees them in the middle of the ocean, flung apart by the waves, like ill- starred lovers in a mythological tale. The next moment she tells herself that Mark is a capable sailor and will lead them to safety. Then she is asking aloud where she will bury them, forgetting that they are lost at sea.

Excerpted from The Love Object by Edna O'Brien. Copyright © 2015 by Edna O'Brien. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.