Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman » (Second Edition)

Nuala O’Faolain was a waitress, sales clerk, and maid; a university lecturer; a TV producer; and a columnist with The Irish Times. The author of three consecutive New York Times bestsellers, her books include the memoir Almost There, a follow-up to Are You Somebody?, as well as two novels: My Dream of You and The Story of Chicago May. She died in Dublin in 2008.

"You don’t want the book to end; it glows with compassion and you want more, more because you know this is a fine wine of a life, richer as it ages."—Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes

One of nine children born into a penniless North Dublin family, Nuala O’Faolain was saved from a harrowing childhood by her love of books and reading. Though she ultimately became one of Ireland’s best-known columnists, her professional success did little to ease her loneliness and longing for a deep connection to the world. Are You Somebody? distills her experiences into a wisdom that can only come from an obstinate refusal to shrink from life.

This commemorative edition of her landmark memoir celebrates O’Faolain’s remarkable life and work with a new foreword from Frank McCourt as well as additional archival materials. Strikingly vivid and starkly emotional, Are You Somebody? is, like O’Faolain herself, a singular example of courage, honesty, and bold living.

Publishers Weekly

O'Faolain, a producer and on-air personality for Ireland's Radio Telefis Ireann, has produced a biography that chronicles not only her life, but also the progress of her country women from the 1940s to the present time. She recalls growing up in the north Dublin community of Clontarf with her mother and siblings as her father, a well-known journalist, dashed around the country, leaving his family living in near poverty. She tells of being educated by the nuns and how Eamon De Valera and the church treated the Irish "like children" by keeping them uneducated about sex. She tells of the terror of being a young woman in an Ireland without contraception and how pregnancy brought ostracism. With the financial help of writer Mary Lavin, she went to college, then on to Oxford and ended up as a lecturer at her alma mater, University College, Dublin. There are many wonderful moments here: platonically sharing a boardinghouse room with the boozy poet Patrick Kavanagh; watching a televised moon-landing at John Huston's Galway home; and enjoying bohemian Dublin in the '60s with the likes of Myles na Gopaleen, Kingsley Amis and Seamus Heaney. Also included here are the author's essays reprinted from the Irish Times on social issues of the day, from divorce to sexual harassment to abortion. A lovely memoir that traces the growth of a woman and her country over the last 50 years.