Set mostly in the western Ireland town of Cloonoila after the collapse of Irish economy in 2008, Edna O'Brien's The Little Red Chairs begins with the arrival of mysterious Eastern Europe holistic healer and poet Dr. Vladimir Dragan, who senses in the town "that primal innocence, lost to most places in the world." Like many of the townspeople, Fidelma McBride, a woman whose husband finds her "elusive, like thistledown," is irresistibly drawn to the exotic, enigmatic Dragan. She's submerged in grief over two failed pregnancies and the loss of her clothing boutique in the economic meltdown. Her decision to engage in an affair with Vlad--in the hope it will result in a pregnancy she believes is impossible with her much older husband--is driven more by impulse than reason. When Dragan's past as a war criminal is exposed, Fidelma's suffering is Job-like in its devastation. She's forced to flee Cloonoila for London, where she becomes part of the community of the rootless, seeking a safe haven somewhere on the European continent.
O'Brien (Saints and Sinners) shifts effortlessly between a moving depiction of Fidelma's humiliation and search for personal redemption and the broader context of "migrants with babes in arms fleeing atrocities and heading for nowhere" into which she's thrust. On either level, she writes with surpassing empathy and insight. The story she tells in The Little Red Chairs is as ancient as national blood feuds dating back hundreds of years and as contemporary as today's Internet headlines. That timeless feeling is only enhanced by the melancholy wisdom she imparts about the inscrutability of human desire. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer