Born: 25 June 1948, Ireland
Died: 26 March 1998
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Bridget Hourican. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
O’Brien, Kate Cruise (1948–98), writer and editor, was born 25 June 1948 in Dublin, youngest among three children of Conor Cruise O’Brien, diplomat and writer, and his first wife, Christine (née Foster). Two years after her birth the family moved from Pembroke Road to Howth, where she spent her childhood, except for a brief period in Paris in 1954 when her father was posted to the Irish embassy. A sensitive child, she was badly affected by her parents’ difficult marriage and their divorce in January 1962. Although she was baptised catholic, both parents were agnostic and she was educated at a protestant school, Park House, where she was miserable. Her grades were poor and were feared insufficient for an Irish university, so in 1965, aged 17, she was admitted part-time to New York University, where her father was teaching. She was unhappy, developed anorexia, and so returned after a year to Dublin, where she gained entry to TCD to study English. In 1971, while she was still at college, her story ‘Henry died’ appeared in the Irish Press, and won the Hennessey Award. That year she married fellow student Joseph Kearney, son of a former secretary to the Department of Defence, and, after graduating the following year, she returned to Trinity to read for a teaching diploma. Failing to find employment as a teacher, she ran a crèche for the children of working mothers, looked after her own son, and worked on her stories.
Her first book, A gift horse, was published by Poolbeg (1978) and won the Rooney Prize. It resembles Joyce’s Dubliners, perhaps consciously, in being a set of fifteen stories, beginning with short childhood accounts, moving through early love, and ending with a long story on the difficulty of married life. The protagonist in all stories is female, and though the name and age change, the voice is consistent throughout, that of an intelligent, neurotic, and morbidly sensitive woman. The book is recognisably autobiographical in parts and touches on her parents’ breakup and her own insecurities. It was widely praised by influential writers, including William Trevor in the Irish Press and Sean O’Faolain, who wrote in the Sunday Press that it contained the seed of genius. However, it was thirteen years before she produced another book, The homesick garden (1991), a novel on an eccentric family told convincingly from the point of view of an adolescent girl, but less striking than her debut collection. It was her last published fiction. Four years later she took a job with her publishers, Poolbeg Press, and discovered her talent as an editor. She was enthusiastic, forthright, generous with her time, and good at discovering new talent, which she nurtured. Involvement with the work of others brought her contentment that had evaded her as a writer. Among the authors she discovered was the best-selling Marion Keyes, who described being forced by O’Brien to reach within herself to write her second book, darker and more personal than her first. Keyes wrote of O’Brien that she was ‘demanding yet generous, acerbic yet kind, astute yet forgiving. She was a great editor, and always made her writers go the hard path’ (Irish Times, 27 Mar. 1998).
Her death in Dublin on 26 March 1998, aged 49, from a brain haemorrhage, was unexpected. She was survived by her husband, son, and both parents.