As Ireland's iconic Edna O'Brien confronts the brutal realities of old age – pain, confusion, hospitals, carers, the battle to keep writing – the world she built through language begins to contract. Her son Carlo tracks every flicker of resilience and every devastating loss, from the comic to the catastrophic, in a narrative that moves with the real rhythm of decline: hope, setback, defiance, collapse, repeat.

At once a document of artistic obsession and a confrontation with mortality, No One Tells You asks what remains when work falters, independence vanishes and the child becomes the witness.



Carlo Gébler is a novelist, critic, biographer, playwright, memoirist and broadcaster. His recent books include A Cold Eye: Notes from a Shared Island 1989–2024,  I, Antigone, Tales We Tell Ourselves: A Selection from the Decameron, Aesop's Fables and The Innocent of Falkland Road. He has worked as a prison and university teacher for many years. He is a member of Aosdána and lives in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.