With the release of her Edna O’Brien documentary imminent, documentary maker Sinéad O’Shea talks about the late writer’s remarkable and often difficult life
With the release of her Edna O’Brien documentary imminent, documentary maker Sinéad O’Shea talks about the late writer’s remarkable and often difficult life
His leer was so filthy it would have you reaching for hand sanitiser. A man over 40. A man who knew so, so much better “So, I think Blue Road is a title which reflects her sensibility, rather than his. Because in the war between them, she was the unequivocal victor.”One of the central accomplishments of Blue Road is the access O’Shea secures. And it was owing to a serendipitous encounter that she came into contact with her literary hero.
Soon after the wedding, O’Shea contacted the groom, asking to be put in touch with her new acquaintance. Carney obliged. “I was at this impasse then, because we had this wonderful interview, and I knew it could be a good film – I had development money from Screen Ireland, who were really enthusiastic – but I had nothing else,” says O’Shea. “And I knew that Edna had cancer, and they had decided to stop treating it. So, it was a very precarious situation. But curiously, Edna herself became this great galvanising force.
“When she went to hospital, she wrote me an email the next day, and she said: please make sure to use that piece of archive,” O’Shea says. “And so, I think maybe in that moment, I convinced her that this was a worthwhile project. And then she couldn’t be stopped.” ‘The best place to see Edna O’Brien was at Mass’: the banned and burned author’s complex relationship with Ireland
O’Brien’s weakness for bad men – “she kept falling in love with these awful men who cared nothing much for her and treated her terribly” – or in her love for the high life, might also be interpreted as flaws which stymied O’Brien. For O’Shea, O’Brien’s earlier work is stronger than the novels of a more political focus that marked the end of her career.
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