Edna O'Brien's memoir, COUNTRY GIRL, is our June Non Fiction choice

[TillyBookClub]

Like Rupert Everett's memoir last month, our June Non-Fiction choice has a candid tone and an extraordinary cast of characters. Edna O'Brien's COUNTRY GIRL opens in 1930, in a ramshackle but relatively grand house in County Clare where O'Brien was born. Her family, once rich but now impoverished by her father's gambling, struggle to maintain standards. O'Brien is sent to a convent, where she falls in love with a nun; moves to Dublin to be seduced by the writer Ernest Gébler and finally flees to London where she writes her novel The Country Girls and becomes a literary superstar. During the early 1960s, she sleeps with poets; she takes LSD with RD Laing and Sean Connery; she throws wild parties at her big house in Chelsea and hangs out with Paul McCartney, Gore Vidal, Princess Margaret and Jackie Onassis.

Throughout this lyrical and astonishing book, there is a pervading sense of O'Brien's contradictory character: beautiful, talented, controversial and brave yet unable to drive, or swim, or be alone. Most of all, she is a survivor, particularly of the oppressive institutions and beliefs that suppressed so many of her contemporaries. For that reason alone, hers is a remarkable story.

Booker-prize winner (and previous Mumsnet Bookcub webchatter) Anne Enright has written an excellent review of COUNTRY GIRL in the Guardian - you can read it here.

Faber have 50 copies to give to Mumsnetters - to claim yours please go to the non-fiction book of the month page. We'll post on the thread when all the copies have gone. If you're not lucky enough to bag one of the free books, you can always get your paperback or Kindle version here.

If you get a free copy, we do expect you to come and and tell us what you think. So please feel free to discuss the book here throughout the month and look forward to hearing your thoughts...

[TillyBookClub]

And for anyone who'd like to watch Edna in conversation with her editor about writing, her childhood and her memory, here is

[DuchessofMalfi]

I would absolutely love to read this. Have applied. Fingers crossed :)

[CotedePablo]

Me too, fingers well crossed here as well.

[Vulgar]

I would love to read it too. Sounds a fascinating life. Have read "the country girls" a long time ago which I think was a fictionalised account of her youth.

[marilynmonroe]

I heard about this book on woman's hour. Sounds v interesting.

[RachelMumsnet]

We've just realised that the books were never sent out by Faber We've asked them to send them out asap and let us know. As soon as we hear they've gone, we'll email those who will be receiving books to let you know to expect one in the post. Apols for this error but a nice surprise in store for those who's names were chosen as this is a perfect summer read.