Sadly IN THE FOREST didn't make it onto the shortlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction but just to remind you though of the wonderful reviews the paperback has received so far: 'Edna O'Brien's thoughts have turned to tragedy of late - her startling new translation of Iphigenia premiered at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre recently, while this novel brings ancient Greek resonance to bear on a brutal multiple murder which rocked a small Irish community in 1994....... The manner in which she ushers her sacrificial victims to their fate hasthe harrowing inevitability one might expect from a writer who has spent a lot of time grappling with Aeschylus.THE GUARDIAN 'An absorbing and haunting novel.... never sensationalist, this is a considered study of a particularly shocking case.'THE SUNDAY TIMES 'this often frightening novel has a curiously timeless feel.'THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Despite the controversy that surrounded the publication of this book, O'Brien has created a tense yet senstively-written story, woven delicately with both mythology and modern sociological issues.'THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST Edna will also be on BBC Radio's BOOKCLUB which will go out later in the year and her PEN lecture on Lampedusa's the Leopard ran

Moving novel by one of Ireland's finest contemporary novelists, and inspired by a notorious true-life triple murder.

IN THE FOREST, set in the west of Ireland, is the story of a young man who shoots dead three people in a forest glade. The young man, Mich O'Kane, is 'not all there in the head' as one character puts it. By puberty he is already committing petty crimes, ending up in borstal. By the time he is back home he has also served time in a British jail and is an institutionalised criminal. His sexual fantasies - revolving around women in the village - eventually centre on Eily, an artist and single mother, who lives with her son Maddie. One day Mich pounces, and orders Eily to drive them to the woods nearby.