SOURCE: A review of Tales for the Telling: Irish Folk and Fairy Stories, in New York Times, March 1, 1987, p. 31.

In the following review, Binchy offers a favorable assessment of Tales for the Telling.

Edna O'Brien can tell a good story and she has a great ear for the way people talk.

Up to now the people who have talked in her books have been complicated women, anguished because their expectations were so ill fulfilled, or happy girls, carefree because they didn't yet know what disappointments lay ahead.

Now she has found a new voice, and a whole new range of characters, in the peopled tapestries of Irish folklore, a world where nothing stays the same and where the action is as fast as the waterfalls and rivers that cascade from the hills, and the quick thinking of heroes who are momentarily outsmarted is like mercury.

There are 12 stories...