Just hours before his mother died, the writer sat down to talk about how his family inspired him and his powerful new book on the Northern Ireland conflict Carlo Gébler has a new book out. Photo: Press Eye When Carlo Gébler was a little boy, his mother, Edna O’Brien, came to collect him from school one day. She had just sold her first novel, The Country Girls.
“I remember her coming to school to tell me and the way the revelation was couched...
There was always an ice-cream van outside the school. Although I wasn’t allowed ice-cream, on this day I could have not only a giant Mr Whippy but I could have a double flake and hundreds and thousands and either chocolate or raspberry sauce. I could have the biggest ice-cream I wanted,” he recalls.
.