The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 29 March 2005
by Nuala O'Faolain
Nuala O'Faolain is a columnist in Dublin, Ireland, and, with this book, has become something of a beloved cultural figure in her home country. This is a brief memoir of her life, growing up and living within a time and a country that had little in the way of opportunity for girls and women. She tells here of her negligent parents, a mother who drank and a socialite father who also wrote columns, but was never home in her youth. She had eight siblings, and all of them suffered under a cultural structure that ignored the destructive results of alcoholism as well as the vital contribution of women. O'Faolain, could have turned this into a maudlin and self-pitying story, but the book rings with a certain realism and a clear-eyed gaze upon an untenable and tragic situation. The cultural lessons of her childhood colored her relationships with men as she matured and as she, unlike many of her class, went off to college and pursued an intellectual life. It took until very late in her life to discover her inherent power and role in the world, and by then, even Ireland was progressing. Throughout the book, O'Faolain engages in a bit of name-dropping that may or may not resonate with readers outside of Ireland. This is, perhaps, the book's main drawback. The writing style has a very direct quality to it, giving it a sincere voice. O'Faolain emerges from her painful history with some serenity, but with loneliness. The path she chose was away from motherhood and marriage, though she always craved these. What she found was a solitude and some peace with that. The book took Ireland by storm, apparently, and this recent edition has an afterword in which the author reflects upon her success and what it meant for Irish women and for herself. Much of the book is moving. Much of it is eye-opening. It is a record of a difficult transitional time in one woman's life, and in the life of a country.