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Life
Winner of Sunday Tribune Award for Best Emerging Writer, 1991; first books Involved (1995) and The Boy in the Moon (Flamengo 1997), concerning a woman whose son dies and who stumbles on secrets of her husbands family; The Angel in the House (2000), The Memory of Stones (2003); set in Paris and Kerry, reflecting the new diaspora.
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Works
Involved (London: Flamingo 1995), 202pp.; The Boy in the Moon (London: Flamingo 1997), 278pp.; The Angel in the House (London: Flamingo 2000), 336pp.; The Memory Stones (London: Pocket Books 2003), 374pp.
See also contrib. to Caitriona Moloney & Helen Thompson, eds., Irish Women Writers Speak Out: Voices from the Field, with a foreword by Ann Owen Weekes (Syracuse UP 2003), q.pp.
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Criticism
‘First Novel was a Great Leap of Faith’ [interview], in Books Ireland (April 2003), pp.81-82; Catherine Heaney, review of The Memory Stones, in The Irish Times (15 March 2003), “Weekend”, p.13 [infra].
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Commentary
Catherine Heaney, review of The Memory Stones (Pocket Books), in The Irish Times (15 Mar 2003), “Weekend”, p.13: writes of debut-novel Involved (1995); Memory Stones her fourth; ‘[…] Nell is a successful, middle-aged woman living in self-imposed exile in Paris since leaving Ireland , pregnant, aged,16. Forced to return-by the news that her daughter Ali, a troubled ex-heroin addict now living in Nell’s childhood home, is in danger, she must also face up to the unfinished business of her own past - a strained relationship with her dead mother, the loss of a sister and the guilt of her exile. […] O’Riordan’s narrative peels away the layers of past hurts, fears and fragile hopes […]Her descriptions of places - a Kerry pub, a Parisian cafe - are alive with detail, and she’s also a master of pace, the sense of dread mounting as history threatens to repeat itself in the cruellest way. Beautifully written - subtle, poignant, and at times funny - The Memory Stones is another result for O’Riordan, confirming her as a faithful observer of the silent, everyday truths that bind families together, for better or for worse.’
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