SOURCE: "Irish Passions: Women Under the Spell," in The Wall Street Journal, Vol. 204, December 17, 1984, p. 32.

In the following review, Peters surveys the stories in The Fanatic Heart.

Reading Edna O'Brien's The Fanatic Heart, an anthology of nearly 20 years of short stories, one sees the same story born again and again, built up into new configurations although the root is the same.

Ms. O'Brien writes from the different turns her passion takes for her native Ireland, the innocence of her Catholic girlhood, and the deep magnetism of sex. They drive the artist back, in memory—force her to return to people and houses and voices she was once overjoyed to quit. Often in adulthood, the female character is an exile—wed to a Protestant, living in England, without custody of her children if divorced. And often she is alone; in the ruins of a love affair.

The stories of...