My Dream of You [Paperback]

I quickly found that though this wasn't the riveting, can't-put-it-down kind of read I'd been counting on, it certainly was an endearing one. Nuala O'Faolain's writing has a richly textured, yet somehow quiet quality about it, that tends to draw one intimately into the story.

Kathleen de Burca is an expatriate Irishwoman on the brink of 50, who's been living in a London basement apartment and employed as a travel writer for over two decades. She's estranged from her family, and her work colleagues are her closest intimate friends. When her best friend suddenly dies, she is not only slapped full in the face with a grief she has never before known, but confronted also with the devastating realization that she is truly and utterly alone, and that her present course precludes that she will be so for the remainder of her life.

Kathleen never does come right out and say it, but the terror and despair she feels is palpable. So she packs up and moves out of her basement apartment (and I must herein state that even though I applauded Kathleen's decision, I felt terribly sorry for "Next Door's Cat," with whom she had shared many of her dinners). She then takes indefinite leave from her job to journey back to Ireland to investigate a divorce case from a century-and-a-half ago, which occurred toward the end of the Irish Potato Famine: a case which had fascinated her ever since she had learnt of it while in her mid-20's.

The divorce case involves an affair between the English wife of an Irish landlord and their Irish servant -- and what makes the case so fascinating, at least to Kathleen is, in her words: "I was interested, always, in any story about passion, so I was interested in Mrs. Talbot and William Mullan. I believed in passion the way other people believed in God: everything fell into place around it. Even before I started mooching around after boys when I was fourteen, I'd understood, watching my mother, that passion was the name of the thing she was pursuing, as she trawled through novel after novel. And it was extraordinary to me that the Talbot affair happened when it did- just after the very worst year of the potato famine."

In Ireland, Kathleen stays with an earthy and agreeable Irish family, and makes friends with a few of the local personalities. Her past is deeply painful, and it keeps creeping into her thoughts. She briefly visits her brother and his wife and child, who are the only family she has left in Ireland; then she meets a married man, and finally gets a taste of the passion she'd been barren of for so many years. Meantime, she's fleshing out her story of the Talbot affair, but in the end her discoveries are not only rare and hard to come by, but are actually materializing into something quite bleak. Her depictions of the massive devastation caused by the famine are, in fact, some of the most shocking and heart-wrenching passages I've ever read.

In the end, it's essentially Kathleen discovering Herself, and in the very essence of that word: she discovers her past, her family, her heritage, her country, her regrets, her longings, her failings, and even her own unique beauty. The factual lives of Marianne Talbot and William Mullan may remain forever shrouded in mystery - for it's most likely that their affair never even took place - but their starving ghosts certainly embody vivid life in O'Faolain's writing:

"The habitat of their passion, where they roamed like two animals on a great plain, was silence. Not perfect silence-- there were always the sounds of the household and sounds coming in from the estate. Sheep, penned in a front yard. The creak of turf carts coming in from the bog. But the couple were habitually mute. Except that they panted and grunted when they forgot themselves in each other. Then afterwards there was peace, and silence again. And after that, she lived in a hot dream of him."

Although Kathleen has been living her life devoid of passion (a series of tawdry one night stands takes passion's place in her world), she is a woman who is desperately in love with passion and desperately in need of it in her life. She even tells us that she "believed in passion the way other people believed in God." It is passion, combined with crisis, that leads Kathleen back to her home in Ireland and to a different kind of writing.

Leaving travel writing behind, Kathleen goes to Ireland to research a book about Marianne Talbot and William Mullen (real people) and Marianne's famous divorce that took place during the nineteenth century. The facts are sketchy and conflicting and Kathleen has to imagine many of them, even providing alternate scenarios. Presumably, a wealthy English landowner named Richard Talbot sued his wife, Marianne, for divorce on the grounds that she had engaged in adultery with one of his grooms, William Mullen. One thing is definitely known...the relationship was one of the deepest passion and the end of the affair, at least for Marianne, was quite tragic. Kathleen has long been interested in the case, but it takes a tragedy to get her to return to Ireland and investigate more in depth.

The background against which this story is set is the An Gorta Mor, or the Great Famine (Irish Potato Famine). O'Faolain has done a wonderful job in recreating this historical period. We really feel we get to know the Irish people during the time of the famine and O'Faolain lets us delve very deeply into their relationships with each other as well.

The entire book doesn't take place in the past...not by a long shot. There are many "present day" characters as well, whose lives and passions come to haunt Kathleen. Among these are her deceased mother, her sister, her brother and sister-in-law, her gay friend, an Irish innkeeper and a man with whom Kathleen, herself, finds some measure of passion, even though it's a little misplaced.

All of the characters in MY DREAM OF YOU are wonderfully drawn and all are quite intense, even if, as is the case with some, their intensity is quite a bit below the surface. It's easy to identity with and have sympathy with these characters. We understand them, we see shadows of ourselves in them, we feel what they feel.

The most likable character in the book is probably Kathleen, herself. She's by far not one of those "perfect" romance novel heroines. She's middle-aged, she's questioning her roots and her own lack of passion and she's far from perfect, all of which serve to endear her to us even more. And, as Kathleen researches the deep passion that consumed both Marianne and William, she explores the reasons why this kind of passion is absent from her own life. Eventually, Kathleen is presented with a life-altering choice, but to give you even a hint of what it entails here, or its outcome, would not be fair to this wonderful book.

MY DREAM OF YOU is a slow paced novel. Even though it does have a definite plot line and interweaving stories, it is heavily dependent on its characters for depth and they do give this lovely book much, much depth and resonance. O'Faolain's writing is clear and precise and, in some places, lyrical, but never overly so. I thought the writing fit the story and the characters perfectly.

O'Faolain does a marvelous job of wrapping up both the nineteenth century narrative and the present day one. She wisely avoids a "feel good" ending, but she does end the book on precisely the right note...one that is romantic and tender and poignant, and, in the case of the nineteenth century story, tragic, as well.

MY DREAM OF YOU is an exquisite book. I would recommend it to anyone who loves character driven novels, literary novels or novels that encompass what it means to be Irish, for, in the end, Kathleen finds that she is not only a woman but she is most definitely an Irish woman as well.

Kathleen begins writing a rather sordid, ficticious account of the doomed union of the Talbots, but eventually has to abandon her imagined take on the scandal as evidence is uncovered which sheds new light of the people involved.

I found this a rambling, boring read. Kathleen has so many flash backs, it's hard to stay interested in the present plot.
I had much higher hopes for this book.