Girl, by Edna O’Brien

Irish novelist Edna O’Brien passed away two years ago. When I read of her death I didn’t know anything about her writing except that her first novel, Country Girls, had been banned in Ireland. That made me decide to read some of her work. As it happens the first book by her that I came across was the last she wrote, in 2019, which I bought over a year ago and has been sitting on my coffee table ever since. I started reading it this evening and found it so compelling that I couldn’t put it down until I had finished it. Girl is set in Nigeria and is told in the voice of Maryam, a young girl who is kidnapped, along with her schoolmates, by the jihadists of Boko Haram. Maryam and the other schoolgirls are subjected to appaling horror and degradation described in unflinching detail. Eventually Maryam is given as a prize to a Boko Haram soldier Mahmoud, and bears his baby (simply called Babby). Maryam escapes with Babby with another girl, and drifts into and out of danger. Upon eventually…