Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman

Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman

3.45 of 5 stars 3.45  ·  rating details  ·  1,520 ratings  ·  191 reviews

Nuala O'Faolain attracted a huge amount of critical praise and a wide audience with the literary debut of Are You Somebody? Her midlife exploration of life's love, pain, loneliness, and self- discovery won her fans worldwide who write and tell her how her story has changed their lives. There are thousands who have yet to discover this extraordinary memoir of an Irish woman
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Paperback, 215 pages
Published January 15th 1999 by Owl Books (first published 1996)
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Cheryl in CC NV
May 15, 2012 Cheryl in CC NV marked it as skimmed-reference-dnf
I'm generally not one for memoirs or for the Irish stories, but this "accidental memoir" and the picture on the cover look so intriguing I can't wait to read it!

Update - so far so depressing - I think it'll get better but gee Irish women had (have?) it rough.

Ok, I'm sorry, I had to give up. As other reviewers have said, it's awfully confusing if one doesn't already know her work or at least some of Irish culture, brand and place names, celebrities like her father... and she does do a bit too muc...more
Faith
Nuala O´Faolain is an Irish journalist and tv-personality... And Are You Somebody? is her memoirs. At the beginning she asks her self the qestion, which became the title of the book, and which is a question she often is asked. Well, off course everybody are somebody. But who is Nuala O´Faolain? What is so speciel about her? Well, nothing special special. I bet there are a lot of women like her in her Ireland. And that's probably why her memoirs became a bestseller.

Well, but I'm not Irish. I'm a...more
Diane
My reaction to this memoir was mixed. I kept asking myself if O'Faolain was a feminist. In therapy when she was in her 30s, she discovered that to survive she must not replicate her mother's life--alcoholism relieved only by reading. But it seemed to me that she wanted her father's life: a journalist who could escape from home, have affairs, and hang out with intellectuals and the rice and famous. O'Faolain's identification with English, male intellectuals--and the "great books" mentality--was a...more
Debra
I was captured the minute I started reading. I did not know the writer or many of the people she discussed but I did know that she fascinated me and seemed to know many Irish and beyond literary figures. Her writing is sublime. After a winter of reading interesting books but none with the beauty hers wrought, I was enchanted. This is a memoir, so Nuala remembers her unconventional life (is there any other kind worth writing about) that during the mid 20th century seems impossible one could live....more
Dinah Küng
Mar 24, 2012 Dinah Küng rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of Angela's Ashes
A pretty searing memoir, that both depresses and uplifts. I'm going to give it four-stars only, because although I'm not prurient by nature, I find the elipsis around her 15 year relationship that she describes as the best love of her life because it involves bisexuality a little jarring in its absence after the very explicit treatment of her youthful lust for men. It's exactly the kind of Irish hushed discretion she deplores from a nun earlier in the book when discussing the "tingling" atmosphe...more
Brenna
I picked this up through paperbackswap.com because it looked interesting, and it delivered – though not in the way I expected. I think I was expecting a female Frank McCourt (author of “Angela’s Ashes”) but Nuala O’Faolain is something completely different. She is a very literary, intellectual woman, who always had a sense of being an outsider in a society that did not want to accept female intellectuals. Growing up with a philandering father and alcoholic mother naturally did not help her self-...more
Angela
I read this book after I read "My Dream of You"
because I wanted to know more about the author.
Herein she describes her upbringing, education, and career as a writer for the Irish Times.
She is an extraordinary person with amazing powers of resilience,
despite her hard-scrabble, rural, Irish-Catholic upbringing, with an absentee father, and an alcoholic mother.
The crushing oppression of women, in Church dominated Post-revolutionary Ireland of the 1950's and 60's, under which she came of age, we...more
Lori
Nuala O'Faolain's memoir is not particulary easy to read. It starts slowly with the history of her young years and family. It's difficult to read about her parent's relationship and the neglect and desperation felt by the family, especially the nine children. O'Faolain is so honest about her own shortcomings and dysfunctions at first it's hard to like her but how we admire her. She chronicles the historical context of Ireland from the 1950's through the 1990's with special emphasis on the role o...more
queen esther
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Ann
A very interesting read -- at times overwhelming! O'Faolain uses the first part of the book to just dump much of her life's experiences. It may have been extremely cathartic for her -- but can be overwhelming for the reader as she bares all-- her alcoholic mother, distant father (who is womanizing elsewhere,) being brought up in a household with 9 children and in in a household that, despite being educated, spent all the available money on alcohol and cigarettes (and gifts for dad's girlfriend)...more
Lina Aguilar
It' a bitch to feel that your nobody.

The book became a best seller because of the topic she deals with that most of us do not want to face: Death, suicide, living in the past because we are afraid to move on and then we don’t know what to do with ourselves in this world. How to live. She writes: “what can I do but take my chances?. . . listen to all the music I can, and keep going. Keep working on my escape tunnels out of the past. Keep hoping to break through to the here and now. To be just mys...more
Lauren
This book gets five stars, which in this case means: brilliant; read it if you have any interest in women's experiences, writing, voice, the Irish in England.

If you love books with a rich, honest, courageous, particularized voice, I recommend this one. I came to love and admire Nuala O'Faolain through reading this memoir. In it, she is stunningly honest about growing up in poverty, in mid-century Ireland, about succumbing to drink and turning away from it, about not wanting to end up like her mo...more
Beth Northcutt
I tried reading this book when it was making the bestseller lists in the late 90s, could not get into it and put it down. After I listened to the audio version of the sequel "Almost There" I decided to give it another try. My favorite quote is from the introduction, "I've never done anything remarkable; neither have most people. Yet most people, like me, feel remarkable". Most people don't have the skill to write about their unremarkable lives in an entertaining way. O'Faolain does.

People who k...more
Kendra
Since it seems like all the books I have on here are ones I really enjoyed, I decided to put a couple that I wasn't that excited about, just to even it out a bit. This (as the title suggests) is a memoir of an Irish lady. I found it to be dull and it took me a while to finish because I had to force myself to read it. I wouldn't recommed wasting your time with this book.
Karen
I heard this author on the Diane Rehm show and loved the sound of her voice. I was intrigued by the answers she gave to the host's questions. I wanted to understand what made her so prickly and defensive. I immediately went to the library and checked out this book. I liked it but felt lost at times with names and places I wasn't familar with. Listening to her narration, I forgot about who was who and just reveled in her descriptions, I was enchanted with her and her story. The title refers to wh...more
Elizabeth
I would actually give this book a 3.75.
Some of the cultural, historical and location references were over my head, but I perfectly understood the love and loss, the desire, the frustration with not being the person you think you should be, the mystery of reconciling your past self and your current self, and the struggle of learning to love yourself and to know yourself in different ways as you get older.
I'm glad I happened to pick up the version with the "Afterwords" section in it, in which Nual...more
Dovofthegalilee
This is a very moving book and it being read by a man who is not drawn to female authors and certainly not feminist literature. I would recommend that if you read this book you obtain a copy that is a later priting and has the additional chapter AFTERWARDS. There's a considerable amount of harsh ctiticism for this book and I think it is unfair. True there is a bit of name dropping but that's why people reaid Anais nin's journals ans here is no different. How "unfortunate" she wa in terms of weal...more
J.S. McLean
A friend got some 90 pages into this book and then stopped reading it in order to make sure I could finish it before my visit ended; she is very wise. There are parts of this story that clarify my ancestor's battles in a way face-to-face conversations never have--it touches on Irishness, Catholic-ness, woman-ness, alcoholism, bookwormish-ness, academia, sexuality, and identity so powerfully that I can only say I will own a copy of my own, and faithfully distribute it to my many relatives and fri...more
Emily
If Ms. O'Faolain would stop name-dropping for a minute and talk about her actual life, I have no doubt this could be a readable tale. However, she seems to define her life by whom she knows, whom she hung out with back in the day, and long lists of literary works and authors she is familiar with. Now, I don't know a whole lot about Irish and English writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, and maybe if I did, I'd care more about what Ms. O'Faolain has to say about them, but I stopped reading this...more
Laurel
A dear friend recommended this read. I thought it was a fairly ordinary memoir of a woman who had gone through depression and alcoholism in her younger years and become a successful writer in middle-age. However, in the final pages of the memoir she expresses feelings about how she is dealing with her life as an "older" woman in her 50's that I could very much relate to; she writes of accepting herself as she ages.

But what made me embrace this memoir was the final "afterwords" section which she...more
Marty
I struggeld with this book and halfway through was sure I really disliked it - and then around page (115)? it all changed and I began to see why the book was so popular. My first impressions were that is was poorly done stream of consciousness - she seemed to skip from topic to topic, time to time and I (at least) had trouble following her. However, at that midpoint it began to come together and "make sense" and I was able to get into the story and follow it more easily. By the end of the story,...more
writer...
Sometimes I wonder if the cover recommendations refer to the same book as the one I’ve just read. An example here –Irish author, Frank McCourt's “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.”
Frankly, for me this book was a struggle right from the beginning. Such degradation of children and adults that it left me longing for the book to end. To stop the sadness. For people to get wiser. To learn...more
Alyssa Treff
I picked up this book as an assignment for my Irish Literature class and found myself in the end with an entirely different view of the world, both literary and of the Irish woman. I could not help but find myself trapped within the world that Nuala O'Faolain painted with words that seemed both painful and cathartic. The In a similar vein to which the pheonix will climb anew from his own ashes once the fire has finished burning, O'Faolain soars from her own life a woman of the world and with a w...more
Julie Laporte
Ugh. I just wrote this huge review, and lost it. :(

Well...in summary, skip the book EXCEPT FOR the LAST chapter, which can stand alone. A heartfelt account of a never-married woman in her 50's, reflecting on her life as an Irish woman. Her affection for her animals as a projection and release of her mothering/nurturing instinct, her lost loves, her abusive/negligent parents. Honest, but not in a "pity me" way. Really makes me appreciate how easily love has flowed through my life so far, and to n...more
Annette
Nuala O'Faolin doubted anyone would be interested in reading about her life. "Am I somebody?", she wondered. In the preface, she writes " "I've never done anything remarkable; neither have most people. Yet most people, like me, feel remarkable". So she summoned her pride and wrote a very remarkable and heartfelt memoir about her life and growth as a woman in Ireland. After hearing her speak in an amusing and wonderfully self-effacing way at a book signing, I wrote to her and was delighted that s...more
Geraldine Moran
This was a good memoir by a very complicated lady - her famiily life was tough with alcoholic mother, a mainly missing father and difficult relationships. She tried multi relationships with men, a long term and loving relationship with a woman and finally back to men again. I think she was also very selfish - it was all about me, mine, myself, but this might have been due to her neglect as a child and her lonely adult life. She died about 4 years ago from cancer and those of her lifelong friends...more
Nancy
I heard Nuala O'Faolain interviewed on CBC radio many years ago when this book came out. She spoke about being a single woman and spending Christmas alone one year - completely alone. I was intrigued. She also spoke about her career as a writer and media person in Ireland and what that was like as a woman. The title of the book came from other women recognizing her at events or on the street and having a sense that she was important but not being able to recall why - so she would be asked - Are...more
Amy
I enjoyed the first 100 or so pages of this book but felt it then began to drag. Nuala is Irish and writes about her experience as a woman from a working class family. She did a good job making the reader understand how many Irish woman became trapped caring for large families and family members with addiction problems. Unfortunately, this understanding isn't uplifting or particularly profound - I thought it was mostly depressing. I'd recommend the first 100 pages as they describe a number of Ir...more
Sheila Omalley
Read this book if you are Irish. I can't quite explain how I can completely relate to the author except the connection in how Irish deal with sorrow. I didn't have the tortured childhood. The life my parents gave us will be forever cherished but every life has it pains. I have never been to Ireland. Recently a woman told me about her trip there and how it felt to see people that look like her everywhere they went. In this book you feel what was felt because of your own life experiences. The alco...more
Cheryl
Nuala O'Faolain was an amazing women. Her memoirs really shared a lot about herself, her love of others, inner struggles/demons.
I saw her give a reading at the King's English a few years ago and she was marvelous, funny, witty and painfully honest about her life. When I heard about her death (via NPR) I was rather sad. That we have lost a great writer, story teller and honest person. Whenever I see a strong Irish female character I think of Nuala. I hope that she is resting peacefully and enjoyi...more
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Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (Paperback)
Are You Somebody?: The Life And Times Of Nuala O'faolain
Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (Hardcover)
Are You Somebody? (Paperback)
Are You Somebody

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Nuala O'Faolain is an Irish journalist, columnist and writer who attended a convent school in the north of Ireland, studied English at University College, Dublin, and medieval English literature at the University of Hull before earning a postgraduate degree in English from Oxford.

She returned to University College as a lecturer in the English department, and later was journalist, TV producer, boo...more
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“If there were nothing else, reading would--obviously--be worth living for.” 6 people liked it
“My life burned inside me. Even such as it was, it was the only record of me, and it was my only creation, and something in me would not accept that it was insignificant.” 4 people liked it
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