What I’m Reading: Joseph O’Connor and Nuala O’Faolain

A Radiant Life: The Selected Journalism of Nuala O’Faolain, by Nuala O’Faolain

Read in June 2012

Three stars

The columns in this collection of Nuala O’Faolin’s writing appeared between 1986 and 2008, and as often happens with collections of newspaper work, not all of the writing here has stood the test of time. Not that the writing is ever less than excellent — O’Faolain always writes incisively and well — but the march of time has reduced the relevance of some of this work. In addition, several selections spin off of news of the day in Ireland which, however horrific or riveting there, never became newsworthy in America. A bit of background would have helped with that. For me, the most interesting pieces were those she wrote from Northern Ireland in 1998, when she moved for a time to the six counties as the Clinton-brokered peace reached fruition. That half dozen or so pieces include insight after stunning insight at the unutterable depth of the sectarian divide and the awesome difficulty both sides will — and have — had overcoming hatred. For me, the weakest of these writings are those about Manhattan: “It was a joyous place, the Paris of our time, stylish, frivolous, affordable, and wonderfully hospitable to dreams. Manhattan is not monumental and self-important, like Washington, and it doesn’t manufacture, like Chicago, and it isn’t intellectual, like Boston. Its industries are the light ones — publishing, fashion, advertising. It knows it is light, and it sends its own light New Yorkness up.” What a naive and uninformed view of what was then — in September 2001 — and almost certainly still is the undisputed financial capital of the planet. Money was, is and always will be the premier industry in Manhattan, which makes it monumental and most definitely important. O’Faolain’s view of New York is sentimental, marveling at the layers of culture deposited in that city by wave after wave of immigrants. Of course, the same could be said of any of the great American cities which rose in the 19th — Boston, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland — the list is long. Those cities and many others — Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle — absorbed new waves of immigrants in the late 20th century, many of them from non-European parts of the globe. Who will enjoy this collection? Readers who really loved O’Faolain’s memoir, Are You Somebody?, people with a special interest in contemporary Ireland, and writers interested in the work of pivotal figures in newspaper journalism.

Almost There, by Nuala O’Faolain

Read in June 2012

Four stars

Dublin journalist Nuala O’Faolain thought she was writing the preface to a collection of her Irish Times columns when she produced Are You Somebody?, a memoir that was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. One of nine children of a famous philandering father and a cold, disappointed and ultimately alcoholic mother, O’Faolain’s memoir detailed her growing up in 1940s and 1950s Ireland, enduring a strict but narrow education by abusive nuns and a country smothered by an rigid patriarchy directed by the church. O’Faolain absorbed the ethos of her nation — women must marry, have children and serve — but managed to avoid actually fulfilling those expectations. Instead she became a university professor, a broadcaster for the BBC and RTE, and finally the most popular opinion columnist in the land. Almost There picks up the story, beginning with the success of her memoir and all that followed — aclaim, wealth, more books — and what didn’t — finding a loving partner to share that success. She hasn’t overcome her anger at her parents, and as she moves into middle age struggles to find the key to contentment as a single woman. Her answer is friendship, travel, art, animals and the natural world. For readers who enjoyed Are You Somebody?, this memoir will be a worthwhile read. For those who missed the first installment, I suggest starting there.

Ghost Light: A Novel, by Joseph O’Connor

Read in June 2012

Three stars

Although Ghost Light is a novel, Joseph O’Connor’s protagonist Molly Allgood was a real woman, a Roman Catholic actress from the Dublin slums who was the muse and fiance of affluent Protestant playwright John Millington Synge in the first decade of the 20th century. Synge was a founder of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and a prominent member of the literary set that advocated a new Irish art based on the experiences of Ireland’s peasants and their folk tales. He wrote the part of Pegeen Mike for her in The Playboy of the Western World, a play set on the west of Ireland that sparked riots in Dublin because of its coarse language and realistic themes that some spectators felt demeaned Ireland and Irish women. O’Connor begins his story with an aged Molly eking out a mean existence in a London still freshly scarred by the bombings of World War II. Still an actress, the majority of the book recounts a single day in the 1950s as she travels across London to a job performing in a radio drama for the BBC. Along the way, she visits a variety of shops, and those stops reveal her to be an alcoholic who lives on the edge of starvation, something she fends off by selling off one-by-one her few remaining mementos of Synge. Molly’s travels through London are interspersed with frequent flashbacks to 1905, the year she met and fell in love with Synge. Neither of their families approved of the match between Allgood and Synge, but they managed to snatch some happiness together despite being surrounded by heavy and heavy-handed disapproval. The structure of the novel is reminiscent of Joyce’s Ulysses, and the story proceeds at a similarly slow pace in dense but vigorous prose. In many ways, Molly is a cranky old lady, but time and again she reveals a truly generous heart, which is why I enjoyed this sad story.