A novel about thirty-something Londoner Ellen who, while estranged from her husband, has a meaningless vacation affair on the French Riviera. Some readers might feel a sense of release in the honesty of this book; others might resent the needle pressed against the balloon.

First published in 1965 this book was initially banned in Ireland because of its sexual content but by today's standards it is pretty tame. This is not a happy or easy book, but that is not a bad thing as life is about exploring the good, the bad and the ugly. After a number of false starts with hotel staff, Ellen falls in with a louche crowd of hangers-on surrounding an American film star. My favorite is the one by Peter Boxall, although he tends to favor the most recent stuff, twenty-first century ultra modern, some of which I find almost indecipherable. This is more of a precursor to the Charles Manson darkness with which that decade culminated than a celebration of excess.

I’m going to have to hunt through my London TBR (now safely arrived) to see what other O’Brien gems I squirrelled away. Separated from her husband, Ellen finds herself living alone in a city she dislikes - a place that denies her past and offers no hope for her future. Another well written Edna O'Brien novel, but not as entertaining and charming and the first two in the Country Girl series.

A fine first edition, first impression, first printing of Edna O¿Brien¿s fourth book August is a Wicked Month in hardback cloth covers with a near fine dust jacket, published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1965.A few plot points are a bit over the top but for all that it’s still a realistic portrayal of a woman in Ellen’s predicament and at her time in life.

She escapes to the French Riviera and meets a new range of people, all the time realising that she is yearning for something that cannot be experienced through meaningless sex. O'Brien just kept throwing test after test at poor ineffectual Ellen, who by the book's end is finally starting to take her life in hand and be adult enough to handle large hotel bills, physical ills, grief, and getting rid of men who really mean nothing to her. At any rate, this novel by O'Brien explores the psychology and neurosis of a youngish, attractive mother who's separated from her husband and goes a little crazy on her summer vacation alone. O'Brien's protagonist is a young, divorced, mother, who decides to go on a frisky holiday for the week her child is away with his father. I've read the trilogy's first book and I thought that O'Brien once again captured the inner feelings of women in Ireland during the time particularly their relationships with men and their place in society as a whole.

Her ex husband has taken their son away on holiday and Ellen decides that maybe a holiday is what she also needs. She has also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy. It’s excellent… I liked the cool restrained style of the prose and was stunned by the revelation that changes the whole feel of the story.