Friends …

 … The Novelists - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… both have developed into authors of extraordinary range. O'Brien has expanded on her early portrayals of small-town Irish life to address issues such as sectarian violence and Irish abortion law. O'Hagan's first book, The Missing, was a nonfiction exploration of children in Britain who have disappeared; he went on to write novels marked by their variety, from an intergenerational story of a Scottish family, to an act of ventriloquism that saw him channel the voice of Marilyn Monroe's Maltese terrier. The two writers are, as he points out, members of the "O-apostrophe club," part of that great diaspora "deeply engaged with reinvention." And, of course, invention.