Though Edna O'Brien is a celebrated novelist, it wasn't till she got to her 20th book that she tackled what's often the most complicated family relationship: that of mothers and daughters. THE LIGHT OF EVENING doesn't just expand on O'Brien's fraught relationship with her mother Leta, who died nearly 30 years ago, but excerpts slightly reworked letters that O'Brien received from her mother.

"It's ironic, isn't it?" O'Brien said in an interview with the NYT's Charles McGrath. "She had this gift; her letters are so rich and full of spirit. She was a writer who imposed a ban on it, and to some extent on me." So what drew her to the complicated mother-daughter relationship? :It;s not as simple as people make it out to be, and I worked in this book to get into the gut of it: all the various strands of love, hate, possessiveness, escape, forgiveness and unforgiveness. I'm ashamed to say I never told my mother how marvelously evocative her letters were. They revive me now; they seem like letters John Clare might have written. But when I received them I was always nervous. She was very attached to me and very watchful."

As for her relationship with her own children - two grown sons - O'Brien is more circumspect. "I think I'm probably not a normal mother," she said, laughing. "I think I'm a nice mother. And I had sons. I was very young, and I brought my children up on my own. They were like little equals to me. When I was growing up there were so many strictures, and I went against that."