Customer Reviews

My Dream of You

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The title of this book might lead you to think that you're in for a good soppy holiday romance, and that's exactly what I thought I was buying as I headed off to the sun. Very quickly into My Dream of You, I realised that I had lucked onto something far more sophisticated and special. What a great book. The main character of the book, Kathleen, finds her life rocked after the death of her closest friend. Unsure of how to proceed with her life she throws herself into a project of investigating an ancient Irish love affair and in the process finds herself discovering some truths about herself. A gripping read - lets hope Nuala O'Faolain writes a second novel.

Part shocking history, part sexual odyssey, all lyrical prose, Dublin journalist Nuala O'Faolain's first fiction is stunning as she interweaves past and present in parallel stories of two women seeking fulfillment.

Ms. O'Faolain's bestselling memoir, "Are You Somebody?," won accolades for its utter honesty and brilliant craftsmanship. These attributes shine as brightly in "My Dream Of You."

Kathleen de Burca, an unmarried 50+ travel writer is a woman who "believed in passion the way other people believed in God; everything fell into place around it."

Yet to date her life has been a series of meaningless, rueful-in-the-morning liaisons. Compounding her unhappiness is the sudden death of her best friend, Jimmy, a gay fellow writer.

Hoping to begin anew, Kathleen takes a leave of absence and returns to her native Ireland. Memories of her homeland are disheartening. She recalls her mother as oppressed and the children as "neglected victims of her victimhood. Villain? Father. Old-style Irish Catholic patriarch; unkind to wife, unloving to children, harsh to young Kathleen when she tried to talk to him."

Nonetheless, Kathleen wants "....my life given back to me, so I can live it again better." She has become fascinated by the Talbot affair, an actual event which took place during the Potato Famine, some 150 years ago. According to records, Marianne Talbot, the wife of an Anglo-Irish landowner, was seen by servants en deshabille with William Mullan, a stableman.

"There could hardly have been two people less likely to be drawn to each other than an Anglo-Irish landlord's wife and an Irish servant," Ms. O'Faolain writes. "Each of them came from a powerful culture which had at its very core the defining of the other as alien."

Intrigued by the disparity between the apparent lovers and the fact that Marianne is found guilty of adultery, Kathleen determines to write their story.

She travels to Ballygall, site of the former Talbot estate, where she is aided in her research by Miss Leech, a feisty spinster librarian; and cosseted by Bertie, a widowed inn owner.

As Kathleen delves into the past readers are reminded of the grim devastation wrought by the Famine. Those were days when the still living "had to open the pit in the top field to push in more bodies," and Marianne could hear through her drawing room window the cries for food, when "the low noise of pleading and begging swelled to shrieking."

Surely few have painted the Famine's stark reality as movingly as Ms. O'Faolain. Her descriptions constrict the heart, enabling readers to see anew a mortally wounded country and its people.

As Kathleen unearths surprising data about the Talbot scandal, she also discovers some truths about herself. It's at this juncture that she finds another opportunity for romance, but at what price?

With "My Dream Of You" Ms. O'Faolain clearly shows that she is not only a deft memoirist, but a brilliant storyteller, a keen observer of humankind, and a compassionate chronicler of a still present past.

A phrase you see on a lot of back-cover-blurbs is that a book is like "Possession." I've always wondered what that meant -that the novel delivers the same kind of engrossing, teasing literary thrill that A.S. Byatt's novel did, or does it mix a modern tale with one placed in the past? Usually it's the latter, with the touted book offering a disappointing shadow of the satisfaction given by Byatt's book.

Nuala O'Faolain charged on the literary scene several years ago with "Are You Somebody?" which intrigued a lot of readers. Her first novel, "My Dream of You" meets everyone's expectations. It is like "Possession" in that it is completely engrossing, teasing, thrilling, moving, and yes, it does include a story rooted in the past. But then, for the Irish, so much is rooted in the past.

Kathleen de Burca is a travel writer whose carefully chaotic life is thrown in to real disorder by the loss of her dearest friend and retirement. She goes back to Ireland to research a novel on a story that's always intrigued her about an English lady's alleged affair with her Irish stableman during the Famine. Her return to the country of her birth brings her back to the land of her wretched childhood, but also throws her into a love affair which turns her upside down.

The characters are so well drawn that it's hard to believe they're not really in the library or behind the bar or in the shop where Kathleen meets them. Ireland, with its rich, conflictive history and wonderful contrary people comes across in all its complexities. Kathleen's physical and spiritual journey is completely involving, and this book lingers long after you've turned the last page.

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Reviews of this book are somewhat mixed, but most acknowledge that Nuala O'Faolain writes so well that even if a reviewer didn't like this, her first novel, there is still an urge to read her nonfiction "Are You Somebody?"

After reading and falling in love with "The Red Tent," I was certain it was unfair to read and review this book set in modern times, with an imperfect female protagonist reluctantly turning 50. But although quite different from the other novel, this is also a story to tenderly love, especially if the reader is a 50-something woman who's made significant mistakes and has often been confused by love, intimacy and family life.

At 20, Kathleen fled to London, leaving her dysfunctional family in Ireland. Her distant mother, left behind, with a string of young children, abandons everyone by dying too young, while pregnant. Her father remarries a woman who has no love for any of the children. Sister Nora goes to New York; brother Dan finds solace in drinking but also with his own loving wife and daughter. The youngest child dies of a blood disease. Kathleen is left alone, on her own, separate from the loveless life of the de Burca family.

Of course, as she later comes to realize, one never really freely escapes; the attachments and lessens learned from home can follow you forever. She manages to create in her own life a detachment from almost everyone. In her search for love and approval, she destroys her first deep relationship while still in her early 20's. She can't seem to shake off her notion that sex and love are connected, that the former will lead her to the latter. Through her 20's, 30's and 40's she's found it impossible to turn down advances from men who find her very attractive, but not suitable for a long term relationship.

She retreats to a basement apartment and a job that requires her to travel from place to place. She alienates herself from her best female friend, from her boss, and from most of her living family but attaches herself into a safely distant friendship with a gay American coworker. When he suddenly drops dead of a heart attack, she is left alone, feeling totally rootless.

The novel follows her search for some connection in her life. She turns to the safety of writing about people who lived long ago -- that of an English woman married to an Irish lord who divorces her for adultery. Within the novel, she semi-retires from her job as a travel journalist, goes to Ireland and tries to research and write her own interpretation of what 'really' happened -- but the story changes as she gets more information. She identifies with the woman, and somewhat desperately folds her own hunger for passion into the novel she's writing (making this around the time of the Potato Famine, when many of the Irish starved to death gives us a painful parallel.)

Along the way she semi-settles into the life of an Irish family and an aging librarian (managing to stay distant yet feel close), reattaches a little with her brother and his family, and meets and falls in love (through a physical encounter) with a married man, Shay, who falls in love with her, too. In a very true and familiar story for many single women, Shay wants to enjoy their love without disrupting his life with his wife, daughters and grandchildren.

The novel within the novel is only slightly distracting toward the end, as Kathleen tries to twist it to fit her own needs (when the evidence is pretty clear about the true story). It would be artificial, I am afraid, to think that at 50, she will radically change, but hope is left at the end that she's heading to some acceptance of herself, of her age, of her life as she has made it (not all bad, not really).

Not a light read, very introspective. I loved Kathleen because she is so much like me -- a cynical romantic (can there be such a thing), ever hopeful and yet practical, imperfect, packed with mistakes and flaws, some painfully obvious to others, some painful to herself, and yet ultimately, lovably human.

Not for everyone, perhaps best for the empathetic imperfect reader!

"My Dream of You" is a totally honest book, so much so that it hurts to read it. There is not one word that is wasted, there is not one thought that is not so pure, so well described, and so TRUE, that it causes the reader to stop breathing for a moment. O'Faolain's great talent is the way she draws the reader in to worlds that should be alien, but somehow feel familiar, eg, Ireland during the Famine. This talent was evident in her memoirs, and is equally strong in this fictional narrative that I suspect is drawn straight out of her own life. Indeed, it matches her memoirs in many aspects, and it is hard to remember that this is only a story. O'Faolain skillfully weaves together two narratives in this book--one tragic love story from the time of the Famine, and one very modern tale of a woman trying to come to grips with aging and all that implies, from the terror of losing her sexuality to the fear, felt for the first time, of being alone. The plot is secondary to the inner thoughts of this incredibly strong and independent woman, Kathleen, as she faces her own inner weaknesses. This is a book well worth reading, and keeping. It is one that I read very slowly, in order to savor every word.

My Dream of You is the best novel I have read in such a long while. It reminds me of Ellen Gilchrist at her wildest and most inventive, except this writer is Irish, not Southern. But she made me laugh, often, and run to read passages aloud, and I cried more than once, and through it all I was amazed at how much wholeness O' Faolain puts down in black and white, how much tenderness and anguish and forgiveness and layers under layers of buried secret griefs. I hope Nuala O'Faolain reads this because I say: Keats and Rilke would be proud. I finished the last 300 pages this Sunday in one sitting. I couldn't stop reading. Beautiful, fantastic NOVEL. Brilliantly, splendidly written. Thank you.

Kathleen De Burca is a thoroughly modern woman living in London. She is nearing 50, but she is still quite attractive, takes care of her body and wears designer clothes. She has roamed the world as a travel writer, eaten in the best restaurants, stayed at elite hotels, and had numerous lovers. To Kathleen, life is about the pursuit of passion and passion equals love. Kathleen will do almost anything in that pursuit, a sort of means justify the ends, even if it hurts other people and herself. Yet real love has still eluded her. She is not sure whether it is the last travel assignment in Manila where she sees children with a baby in the road that puts her off travel writing, but for sure, the sudden death of her best friend and colleague, Jimmy, signals a wake-up call.

Finally feeling that she has finally hit rock bottom, Kathleen decides to give up travel writing and go back to her native Ireland, which she ran from twenty years before and never looked back. The purpose is not to stay or reunite with her family she tells herself, but to research a real nineteenth century Irish scandal, that had come to her attention years before - a love affair between a member of the gentry (the Talbots) and her Irish groom, that resulted in a tragic divorce and the loss of her child. There are a lot of unanswered questions in Kathleen's mind about the case.

Kathleen travels to Ballygall, in remote Western Ireland, the lands of the former Talbots. She begins her research but becomes more and more intrigued by the history of the potato famine of 1848 and wonders at the connection to the 1849 scandal.

As if this were not enough, fate draws Kathleen into an unexpected affair, but this time it is real love and she is going to have to make difficult choices. That and her being back on Irish soil and researching the scandal, force her to look back on her life and face painful truths.

This is a large menu and in much less skillful hands it may have failed, but in the hands of Nuala O'Faolain, it is a triumph. As Kathleen asks the tough questions, we the readers are always one step ahead or one step right after her anticipating and asking also.

This is too good a story to spoil, so I won't tell you the outcome, but as the two stories intertwine, Marianne Talbot's and Kathleen's, we find out that life is much more complicated than it seems and that there are no easy answers. The story is spellbinding and heroic, gorgeously written, full of constant surprises. If you have one novel to read this year, make it this one!

An elegantly composed symphony of passion and emotion. A coming of age in middle age book. A historical novel. A story of a hard scrabble traditional Irish Family, melding into the present day. Coming to terms with the sudden death of a companion, a middle aged Irish immigrant heads back to Ireland, to solve a 150 year old mystery of passion. Along the way, her own personal mysteries begin to unravel. An amazingly candid look at mid-life, romance, where we come from and what it makes and takes of us. As well as a picturesque vision of Ireland juxtaposed against the unglamourous and merciless Ireland of the potato famine and religious oppression. A fascinating and utterly bewitching story that will stay with me always. Some of the best writing I have ever encountered.

I picked up this book on a recent trip to Ireland, mostly to occupy my time while waiting for buses -- but instead, once I started reading it, I could hardly put it down. I'd already read her nonfiction "Are You Somebody," and some of the same themes and characters reappear here, but she's woven them so effectively into the story that they don't seem intrusive. I found the narrator inherently interesting because I'm a woman of about the same age who grew up in a partly-Irish Catholic family. I feel that the main character is an accurate embodiment of the mind-set inculcated into many women of our generation and background: a woman's role in life is to love and be loved, and to serve others selflessly; and if your life isn't everything you want it to be when you reach middle age, it's ALL YOUR FAULT for not living up to the womanly ideal. Intense self-examination is part of the process of dealing with this ("Where did I go wrong?"); denial is part of it too, and the main character's ruthless analysis of her illusions and self-destructive behavior patterns was, I felt, admirably done. The 18th-century tragic romance woven into the story is touching in its own right, but it also reflects (in melodramatic exaggeration) the narrator's thought processes and emotional states. What I found most engaging about the book was the characters: the author has a facility for depicting memorable personalities, and everyone -- from the narrator's family and friends, to the supporting characters in the imbedded story -- was vividly described, both physically and mentally. I didn't feel that the ending was "inconclusive": the narrator has come to a better understanding of her own behavior, rejected yet another emotional "dead end," and engaged in a selfless act of friendship that has the potential to turn into something more, so she's definitely matured in the course of the story. All in all, I found the book highly satisfying, and I look forward to more fiction from O Faolain.

My Dream of You is one of the most best books that I've read this year. It's the intensely-felt, beautifully-written, and deeply-moving story of a brief period in the life of travel writer Kathleen Burke (Caitlín de Burca in the Irish), told in unrelentingly-honest first-person narration, during which she examines in minute and searing detail the events of her childhood, youth, and adulthood. In comparing her own life with those of the principals in a scandalous divorce case during the Great Famine years, and in attempting to reconnect with family, friends, and ancestry kept at a distance too long, Kathleen leads the reader step by step through the pain, struggles, and triumph of her fifty years on earth.

More than anything else, this is a novel about survival: although millions died during the Famine, the survivors went on to found the Irish nation; although Kathleen's life has been filled (and overflowed at times) with the suffering and the remorse of unexamined fears and misdirected ideals, she has gone on to build a successful career and now, perhaps, will create something true and important in the latter part of her life. O'Faolain's writing is filled with the most perfect of imagery, capturing a room, an innkeeper, a lake in a valley, in just a few well-chosen words.

At the end I put my head in my hands and quietly wept--in sympathy, or, more accurately, in cathartic empathy for Kathleen's middle-aged awakening. I can't recommend this book highly-enough: lyrical, contradictory, gritty, poetic, romantic in the deep, deep sense of the word, stinging and scalding and uplifting in turn, Irish to the core. Simply beautiful, with nothing simple about it.