Life
1954- [bapt. Karl; err. Gebler]; b. 21 Aug., Dublin, son of Edna O’Brien
and Ernest Gébler; moved to London with his mother, 1958; ed. York
University (English, 2.i); National Film and Televison School, Beaconsfield;
Eleventh Summer (1985), a first novel dealing with a child’s
experience of parental death; August in July (1987), followed by
Work and Play, about drugs, Driving Through Cuba (1988),
Malachy and His Family, and Life of a Drum (1991), in which
a woman marries an emigrant so he can stay; lived in Dalkey, before moving
to Enniskillen with his wife Tiger and 5 children; and there wrote The
Glass Curtain (1992), a documentary of the troubles after the bombing
of war memorial service by the IRA; The Cure (1994), dealing with
the burning of Bridget Cleary by her husband and others in March 1895
in Ballyvadlea, nr. Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, in the belief that she is
a changeling; reviews for Fortnight Review, n.s. (July 1995, &c.);
W9 and Other Lives (1996), stories; How to Murder a Man (1998),
a novel set in Ireland in 1851 and centred on Thomas French, an Irish-born
land agent, and Isaac Marron, an local Ribbonman and political assassin,
somewhat basd on experience of Steuart C. Trench; currently working on
a novel dealing with his troubled relationship with his father; Father
and I (2000), dealing with his childhood, was published in September
2000 and featured in the Times Literary Supplement.
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Works
Novels, The Eleventh Summer (London: Hamish Hamilton/Penguin;
NY: Dutton 1985), and Do. [reiss.] (Belfast: Lagan Press 2002), 194pp.;
August in July (London: Hamish Hamilton/ Penguin 1986), also in
Sweden; Work and Play (London: Hamish Hamilton/ Penguin; NY: Fireside
1987) [also in in Holland]; Malachy and His Family (London: Hamish
Hamilton/Abacus 1990); Life of a Drum (London: Hamish Hamilton/Abacus
1991); The Cure (London: Hamish Hamilton/Abacus; NY: Little, Brown
& Co. 1994); W.9. & Other Lives (Belfast: Lagan Press 1996;
London & NY: Marion Boyars Ltd. 1998); How To Murder a Man (London:
Little, Brown & Co. 1998; NY: USA only, Marion Boyars Ltd 1999). Autobiography,
Father and I: A Memoir (London: Little, Brown 2000), 405pp.; The
Eleventh Summer (Belfast: Lagan Press 2003), 206pp.
Miscellaneous, Driving through Cuba (London: Hamish Hamilton/Abacus; NY: Fireside 1988), travel; The Glass Curtain: Inside an Ulster Community (London: Hamish Hamilton/Abacus 1991), travel-cum-autobiography; Father and I (London: Little, Brown 2000), 405pp.
Children’s Books, The T.V. Genie (London: Hamish Hamilton Children’s Books 1989), for children; The Witch That Wasn’t (London: Hamish Hamilton Children’s Books/Puffin 1992); Frozen Out (London: Reed Children’s Books 1998); The Base (London: Egmont Children’s Books 1999). [Supplied by author.]
Articles, review of Death and Nightingales in Enniskillen local history magazine, The Spark [Eugene McCabe, RX]; also ‘Archer’s poison arrows’, review of Jeffrey Archer, Stranger than Fiction, in Fortnight 344 (Nov. 1995), pp.34; ‘At the Depot’ [an encounter with a bag-lady], Fortnight Review 343 (Oct. 1995), p.24; ‘The taxi driver’s story’, in Fortnight 344 (Nov. 1995), p.28; also ‘The Garageman’, Fortnight Review (Dec. 1995), p.24; ‘Kat’, Fortnight (March 1996), p.28-29; also review of Camus: The First Man, ibid., p.34-35 [‘buttoned-up literary persona under which Camus hide all his life ... unashamedly, unabashedly, joyously, an autobiographical novel’]; ‘A child of history’, review of Ita Daly, Unholy Ghosts, in times Literary Supplement (1 March 1996), p.24; review of Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People, in Times Literary Supplement (14 Feb. 2003), p.9 [infra]; ‘Reading and Sleeping in the Ceauexcu Sex Hotel’, in Fortnight (July/Aug. 2003), pp.18-19 [story].
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- Rüdiger Imhof, review of The Cure (1994), in Linenhall Review (Spring 1995).
- Bernard O’Donoghue, ‘From Connemara to Cuba’, review of How to Murder a Man (Little Brown 1998), and W9 and Other Lives (Boyars), in Times Literary Supplement (29 May 1998) 25.
- John Boland, review of How To Murder a Man (1998) in The Irish Times (2 April 1998)
- Shirley Kelly, ‘The Poison from the Past’, interview with Carlo Gébler, Books Ireland (September 2000): 211-12.
- Tony Gould, review of Carlo Gébler, Father and I: A Memoir (Little, Brown), in Times Literary Supplement (8 Sept. 2000): 27.
- Molly McCloskey, review of Father and I (Little, Brown & Co.), in The Irish Times (2 Sept. 2000).
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Notes
Bridget Cleary: The Bridget Cleary affair is dealt with in Cork
Examiner, 28 March 1895 and [Anon.,] ‘The Witch-burning
at Clonmel’, in Folk-lore, Vol. 6, 1895, pp.373-84. See also
Geneviève Brennan, ‘Yeats, Clodd, Scatalogic Rites and
the Clonmel Witch Burning’, in Yeats Annual, No. 4 (1986),
and Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary (1999).
TLS Roundup: In ‘International Books of the Year’ (Times Literary Supplement, 4 Dec. 1998), Carlo Gébler chooses Graham Rawle’s Dairy of an Amateur Photographer (Picador 1998), John Milne’s Alive and Kicking, and Will Self’s Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys in Times Literary Supplement.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)