Are You Somebody? [Import] [Paperback]

Nuala O'Faolain (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: New Island Books (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190549453X
• ISBN-13: 978-1905494538
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (93 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read, November 16, 2000

By 

kbwong (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (Paperback)

If you like your tales to have an ending, a point, and a moral-of-the-story all nicely and neatly printed out, avoid this book. If you are intelligent enough to draw your own conclusions and examine both your own and other people's lives in the clear light of day, you will be delighted and mesmerized by this book.

Nuala O'Faolain is a work in progress, and she knows it. She's a product of her generation who has spent her life trying to become something other than what she was raised to be. She shares what her life has been with clarity and humor; she whines and then prods at herself for whining; she presents her own confusion and negatives in a stark and uncompromising manner. She is fully human right out in front of God and everybody, and I can only admire her bravery and hope that someday I'll grow up to be of her character.

The women who were born the two generations before mine (I was born in 1960) are the ones who were the advance soldiers in the dirty, muddy war of women's rise to full citizenship of humanity. I admire them, I thank them for their sacrifices, I hope that their struggles were not in vain. O'Faolain's book gives a human dimension to what will someday be three or four lines in a history book. I gulped it down in two sittings, finishing up at 2 am.

It's not a book for everyone (and thus only four stars). Wait until you're mature enough to really understand that no one is really as mature as you thought you were when you were 21. Wait 'til you're old enough to have compassion for the humanity in yourself and others. And then you'll be able to "get" this book.

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars middle-aged conventional man finds Nuala valuable, February 23, 2000

By 

Bill Compton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (Hardcover)

You either love this book or find it a tedious whine. Why would a conventional, middle-aged English teacher like myself find it worthwhile, even riveting? It helps that I have visited Ireland several times in recent years, and have gradually seen beyond the Irish Tourist Board conception of the emerald isle. And I have enjoyed Dublin, despite its scruffy character. I also have spent most of my professional life working with single women, and though none of them have faced life situations as tough as Nuala's, I still found connections with her life and their's. I also teach English, and I love her affection for poetry and books. But most of all, I love her truth-seeking, and despite some of the personal complaints on this list of reviews, this is a crafted book that never left me confused. We all have parents, and conflict between us seems to be just a part of living we can't altogether avoid. I thank Nuala for bravely writing her memoir. I read it straight through in two chunks of time over two days.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A particularly Irish life, but not just for the Irish, July 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (Hardcover)

I found this book intensely moving -- but not for the reasons I thought I would. It's everything the reviews say: a brutally honest picture of the author's chaotic and emotionally starved childhood, a memoir of literary Dublin in the 60's, a melancholy tale of her search for a lasting love, and a chronicle of her journalism career, and on that level it's a fascinating (and beautifully written) story for anyone.
But I'm only about 5 years younger than Ms. O'Faolain. I was raised in a (partly Irish) Catholic family, went to Catholic schools all the way from kindergarten through college, then went to graduate school at Berkeley in the late '60's. Time after time, her observations chimed with my own: the cruelty masquerading as love (or maybe it's the other way round) in Catholic schools; how living in an intensely Catholic environment blinds you to any other viewpoint; how matter-of-factly women were consigned to invisibility in our era, even (and especially) the well-educated; and how the assumption of male superiority lingered on throughout the supposedly "liberal" sixties and seventies.
As the author points out in "Afterwords," her book became a best-seller in Ireland because she articulated what many of her fellow-countrymen felt but couldn't say about their lives. But I think her experiences have a far wider relevance for any woman who grew up in the same time period -- and who's now struggling to make sense of her life.