Often compared to her contemporaries Edna O'Brien and Julia O'Faolain, Clare Boylan writes fiction that focuses on the lives of family members, particularly the women of the house whose lives have been shaped less by personal will and choice than by societal and religious strictures. In her novels Boylan blends moments of humor, in which she reveals an unusual imagination, with moments of poignant seriousness. Her exploration of such subjects as virginity, motherhood, and domesticity suggests a feminist reading of relationships and life for women in a patriarchal society--though her views are never stated dogmatically and her characters are always developed thoroughly and carefully.

Novelist, short-story writer, newspaper and magazine journalist, and editor, Clare Catherine Boylan was born on 21 April 1948 in Dublin, Ireland--a fifth generation Dubliner. The youngest of three daughters born to Patrick Boylan and Evelyn (neé Selby) Boylan, Clare Boylan experienced a creatively stimulating environment...