Almost There: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman

Nuala O'Faolain is completely frank and honest without sacrificing elegant prose... sa memoirist unconcerned with image. Her experiences take on a universal quality--I'm not a fifty-something Irish writer whose parents were miserable together (one cold, the other alcoholic) when not being charming. Yet in her descriptions of fear, loneliness, hope I find myself feeling singing "she's killing me softly with her song."This is no feel-good "How I overcame bad times" memoir in which the heroine is homeless/battered/deathly ill but survives "with a little help from my friends." Nuala recounts successes, mistakes, bad judgement, anger, joy without ever portraying herself as a victim. And the result is that her story lands in your gut.Few writers would admit worrying about the cat being lonely if she went out for an evening-- they'd be too self-conscious and worry about looking pathetic. Not Nuala. The result is that she wins us over utterly. This book opens with a great deal more joy than her other books (the wonderful memoir Are You Somebody? and the novel My Dream of You). She recounts with wonder the unexpected success of her memoir and the opportunities it brought her-- the waves of approval from TV talk-show audiences, the trip to New York where she met Frank McCourt, the money. But it didn't ultimately protect her heart from a painful end to a long-standing lesbian relationship, a one-sided affair with a married man, and a troubled relationship with a man she met on line, whose little girl Nuala had to struggle not to resent.I heard O'Faolain read at Colliseum books New York, and she recounted how in Dublin, everyone criticized her for having had an affair with a married man (who, to be fair, did not ever tell her he was married until very very late in the game) while in America, people were shocked at her attitude to the child. Yet in both, O'Faolain is nothing more than honest. Who hasn't felt jealous and wished they didn't? O'Faolain is never malicious, vindictive or cruel.She writes with candor about being down-and-out inside, though material circumstances look well. She's an inspiration in every way-- she gives the reader permission to empathize, to say, "yes, it's like that, and she survived, and I can too". You don't have to have a terrible illness or crushing poverty to have legitimate feelings of despair, and O'Faolain is proof that they can be overcome-- with grace.And her prose is terrific. Simple without being simplistic, somehow she turns a riff on 9/11 to a consideration of voting in Africa. She's a real writer, and one for the ages-- her main focus is on herself, but her gaze takes on all humanity.

This moving, thought provoking, warm, witty reflection by Irish journalist Nuala O'Faolain become an intimate conversation with a friend as it is read in the author's inimitable voice. "...I believed myself a failure....., " Ms. O'Faolain opines. "I hadn't acquired any of the usual rewards of the middle of life - I didn't have anyone to love or to love me. I had no child, no other achievement, no money. I quietly drank a bit too much wine every night." These words follow the break-up of a 14 year relationship with Nell, an Irish feminist. Despairing of ever maintaining a loving relationship, Ms. O'Faolain seeks solace in reading, classical music, an adopted mongrel pup, and, of course, her work. Throughout "Almost There" is a recurring theme: the search for love. Following Nell Ms. O'Faolain embarks on an affair with Joseph, an unlikely paramour if there ever was one. He is an ordinary older man with silver hair, a married truck driver who left school at 11, and found no need to be literate. Joseph is succeeded by John, a Brooklyn lawyer whom she met through an online dating service. She is now 61. He is twice divorced, the father of an 8-year-old daughter. Of her late-in-life new love she remarks that it is a time when "good things matter to their fullest extent, because you know exactly how rare they are." Some material found in "Are You Somebody" is revisited in this follow-up memoir. She reiterates the price to be paid for speaking out in a country that "put the lid on things." For the Irish, she writes, "Silence was the defensive strategy of a people who did not believe situations can be changed and did not imagine they could ever get away from each other...." And there again is the crux of the matter: the belief that she will forever be haunted by her mother's neglect. With the book's closing lines the author paints an imaginary reunion: her mother is sitting on a barstool, and moves over to make room for her daughter. Just as she does Ms. O'Faolain turns her back and walks out the door. "Almost There" is rich, passionate, and ribboned with sadness. It is an uncommon examination of human longing and loneliness often sparked by Ms. O'Faolain's wry, self-effacing humor. It is tribute to a country written and read by one still searching for her home. - Gail Cooke

Particularly the portions dealing with her jealousy of a child. It took guts to write this.

"I think you can be born homesick. I think you can have a dislocated heart. No place will do. The most wonderful home in the world full of the most love wouldn't be enough for you - you'd keep looking around for where you belong." The "you," of course, is O'Faolain herself, a restless soul still searching for - love? contentment? self-assurance? - still hungry as she reaches 60, her professional life materially validated by bestsellerdom and floods of heartfelt (often heartbreaking) letters from readers of her first memoir, "Are You Somebody?"Readers of AYS who were swept up by the intimacy and energy of O'Faolain's voice, the unvarnished honesty of her brutal stories of childhood, her hard-won place in Irish journalism and her ongoing, episodic search for love, will find the same frank passion in this second book. Written after the success of AYS and her first novel, "My Dream of You," "Almost There" muses on the changes acclaim has brought - financial security, prestige, Italian holidays and writing sojourns in Manhattan. She describes the writing of the novel and the lover she had at the time - nearly illiterate, married, elderly and secretive - with a clear-eyed distance that combines rueful, wry self-knowledge with raw passion. She shows where she borrowed from real life for her fiction, she tells how AYS affected relationships with friends and old lovers, whose versions differed, sometimes, sharply, with her own. "I hadn't realized before I wrote AYS that I for one need constantly to relearn a simple thing - that I do not understand other people as they understand themselves."There's a great deal in this vein, how "the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written." And there are the things that haven't changed - a deep vein of self-perpetuating loneliness, and, in contrast, an optimistic certainty of her capacity to change. And in the end, she leaves us curious, as she did at the end of AYS - does she work things out with her lover's child? Does she persevere this time?And there's much reflection on age, on how the shortness of time reduces options. Nothing earth-shattering there, but O'Faolain's breath-catching fierceness makes it feel fresh. Fans will love this book and hope for another installment. Newcomers I'm less sure of. There's so much that reflects and illuminates her previous books that new readers will either search those out immediately or lose interest halfway through this one. Cranky, acerbic, sometimes pathetic, O'Faolain possesses the ardor of youth and the (sometimes) wisdom of age.

Nuala's new work is a glowing gem. It is a secret and raw look into the life behind the covers of her first memoir. She shines a bright light on her path to recovery from a broken childhood, into world wide success and then into a new reality where more intimate goals are challenged and reached. Nuala is totally unafraid of presenting all of herself to the world. Including her cruelties, frailties and fears as if to say, Here I am. Here is my world. My path isn't always clear and without stumbling. Her unending wit, charm, strength, humor and candor endear her to me. Her total commitment to searching for the truth in the chaos of life with all its emotions and issues is brave and unrelenting. Only Nin matches the level of intimacy shared to readers. She speaks of issues few if any writers have the bravery to tackle. What I loved about this work is its total lack of pretension, its honesty and compassionate seeking of the truth. She paints the real picture, which deeply touches my soul. Today's world is not the cookie cutter vision of family happiness that was promised. She has the bravery to speak about challenging subject matter with a human voice. And a beautiful voice at that.