Almost There

In this brutally honest account of her life, O'Faolain reveals her introspections on her own existence. Losses and regrets are examined in detail as she untangles her thoughts about them. Her melodious voice lends a calming sense of catharsis as she shares her innermost feelings with her listeners. Writing is "clarifying the muddle in my head," she says, and the "therapeutic effects of autobiography" can be truly heard through her narration of her journey as woman and writer. As she floats from topic to topic, the listener is privy to details and minutiae that flesh out a whole person who has lived a full life. D.L.M. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

November 11, 2002
A memoir may be a summing-up of a long, interesting life, or it can be a sort of self-examination so addictive the writer joins the ranks of the "serial memoirists." O'Faolain's a repeat offender, effectively rechewing material incompletely digested in her previous memoir, Are You Somebody?
She opens by listing what she doesn't have, as she enters her mid-50s—someone to love, someone to love her, money, a workplace, a pension—but it's clear love is her biggest problem: "How have I ended up with nobody?" Her early boyfriends were apparently unremarkable, her 15-year relationship with "Nell" ended awfully and her subsequent affair with an elderly married man was mostly imagined. Toward the book's end, she's almost ditching her relationship with a divorced father, resenting his intimacy with his daughter. Her anger at her dysfunctional parents seethes throughout, culminating in a fantasy of joining her (now deceased) mother in a bar, and walking out just when Mom's ordered her a drink. By ending on that note, O'Faolain hints that her parents' lovelessness made it hard for her to love, an unsatisfying conclusion to such a nuanced account. Still, readers will enjoy O'Faolain for her witty turns of phrase: as an ex-smoker, she follows street smokers "to gulp their slipstreams," and she fears she's aging so badly she's "joining the rejects of the next-to-Last-Judgment." Her self-deprecation—so reminiscent of Jean Rhys—can be oddly comforting. (Feb. 24)Forecast:Irish writer O'Faolain's popularity in the U.S. (My Dream of You was a 2001
New York Times Notable book and it, along with
Are You Somebody?, hit bestseller lists) will help this book's sales. Expect St. Patrick's Day tie-ins.