It is surely no coincidence that most of the Irish writers who have lived out of the country have felt the urge to write about their relationship with the land of their birth. One thinks of Lady Morgan, a trashy novelist and the Edna O'Brien of her day; Thomas Moore, whose Memoirs in the form of letters and correspondence were edited by Lord John Russell; Sean O'Casey, George Moore, Kate O'Brien, Mary Colum and Oliver Gogarty. I seem to remember that Shaw wrote some pages of autobiography in extreme old age; while Elizabeth Bowen published a history of the Shelbourne Hotel, which was part of her youth. Yeats, who spent a far greater amount of time in England than he liked to admit, reconstructed his childhood and youth in Autobiographies, published in 1926. Joyce was the exception to this rule, as he was to so many others. But then he used everything that happened to him in his books, which are all self-portraits.

One would think that Miss Edna O'Brien would be content with telling her experience in childhood and youth over and over again in her novels. But no such luck. Here she comes again with her version of Ireland, and the effect it had on her development. She tells us in the last paragraph that she wants to retrace the same route again and again, "that trenchant childhood route" in the hope of finding some clue "that would make possible the leap that would restore one to one's original place and state of consciousness, to the radical innocence of the moment just before birth." This is an ominous threat. Not content with boring everybody with the very ordinary experience of poor little me, she is evidently now preparing to regale us with her pre-natal experiences also. She is a silly and sloppy writer, the darling of the semi-literates; but is it possible that even they are prepared to believe such a ridiculous statement?

Mother Ireland begins with a potted history of our unfortunate country which is obviously aimed at a foreign readership. To give her her due I don't think that even Miss O'Brien really believes the mad Kerry nun who in 1860 proved to her own satisfaction that we are all descended from a Jewish lady who was a niece of Noah. That should go down well in America, where the tradition of Abie's Irish Rose still lingers.

There is a hilarious passage about my own town of Athlone which got its name, according to Miss O'Brien, from a battle between a couple of bulls. One of them left his loins in the place: hence Ath Luaine, the ford of the loins. Naturally, she would pick on that particular fairytale. It never seems to have occurred to her that the original name of the place was Atha Mor, the big ford. And she describes Clonmacnoise as "a land of roses fair." "Fair" is not mentioned in Rolleston's poem. In many ways this is a sad book. It is obviously a potboiler; and even on that level it is not good.

After knocking off the history of Ireland in her not-too-elegant prose, Miss O'Brien goes on to repeat all she has told us before about the village in Clare where she was born and brought up. It sounds a pretty dreadful place. And will we ever hear the end of the man who was in the habit of opening his trousers as the little girls passed by and inviting them to "come here till I do Pooley in you"? Apparently not.

Then we get the boarding-school days in a convent. These were pretty awful too. And unconsciously, I imagine, Miss O'Brien presents herself as a thoroughly sly little girl. But that is already apparent in her other books. Never was such a television career made on so slender a talent.

After the convent comes Dublin, where she glimpses the great big world, or so she thinks. This includes walking out with a breadman from the firm of "Johnson, Kennedy and O'Brien": an unlikely combination. But perhaps this is deliberate. Even Miss O'Brien could not have such a defective ear as that. Or could she? It may be the reason why her writing is so execrable.

Eventually of course she escapes to England, with no regrets. Would to God that she had the ability to match her ambition. As it is, all one can say about this deplorable production is that the photographs are wonderful. It is a thousand pities that they are accompanied by such a text.