Almost There (Paperback)

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.