NO ONE TELLS YOU

It is a sad, beautiful and wise meditation on ageing, grief and death, as well as a portrait of his late mother, one of Ireland’s great writers.

-- Lara Marlowe * Carlo Gébler on his mother Edna O’Brien: ‘She was very protean’ *

Now her son has produced a chronicle of O’Brien’s final years, a twilight marked by her struggle to keep working despite illness and frailty, and of the impact of her death on his own life.

-- Rory Carroll * The twilight of Edna O’Brien: son chronicles novelist’s dedication to her craft and the dread of loss *

Although social justice issues pepper the text, it's the memoir's personal reflections that prove most thought-provoking. The unspoken loneliness of the carer when confronted with the world's indifference to what they, and their loved ones, are going through - airports at dawn already stuffed with drunk holiday-makers, work demands arriving at the worst moment, even the well-meant but ill-timed kindness of friends.

-- Eimear McBride * Son's poignant portrait of the last years of iconic Edna O'Brien *

Much in evidence, too, is Gébler's great respect for those who care for us when we can no longer care for ourselves, often doing so without recognition or reward.

-- Eimear McBride * Son's poignant portrait of the last years of iconic Edna O'Brien *

No One Tells You is an entirely unsentimental yet deeply emotional read which not only adds another layer to our understanding of a remarkable life but reminds us to be humane in our own.

-- Eimear McBride * Son's poignant portrait of the last years of iconic Edna O'Brien *

'Instead, what is offered here is a quiet, unflinching and moving reflection on watching a loved one age; a book that tells, in close-up focus, what it feels like to watch a parent weaken and to learn what 'no one tells you' before.'

-- Margaret Kelleher * How Edna raged against dying of the light *

'Not only a narrative about a son and mother, this is definitely also a book about two writers and about the vital power of writing as a life force for them both.'

-- Margaret Kelleher * How Edna raged against dying of the lig