At first, I thought it was a practical joke, or that perhaps there were two Edna O’Briens: one was the greatest living woman writing in English (as Philip Roth described her), while the other was someone who happened to have the same name. An email arrived out of the blue from “Edna O’Brien”, wanting to meet and discuss a book with which she thought I might be able to help. I replied, delighted to oblige, trying to ask discreetly whether or not this was “the” Edna O’Brien, whose work I had admired for decades.
It was. And so began an adventure I would be shy to call “friendship”, but among the more important acquaintances of its kind.
