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"Irish times columnist Nuala O'Faolain opens her past and looks at it in this searingly honest midlife exploration of the love, pain, loneliness, loss, and self-discovery she has experienced. The result is a classic memoir. Born one of nine children in a penniless North Dublin family headed by an overwhelmed mother and a charming but absent father, Nuala not only survived but pushed at the boundaries of the confining Catholic Ireland she grew up in. The author spends much of her life seeking the sense of self that hostile environment denied to girls and women. But Nuala sees this past with new eyes when she takes the opportunity, in her fifties, to examine the meaning of her life and to review her accomplishments as well as her deep yearning for a sense of fulfillment." "Gifted commentator that she is, Nuala shows us her private thoughts and public actions as they play against the backdrop of the rural Ireland she knew as a child, the blossoming intellectual scene of Dublin in the fifties, and the unspoiled Oxford of the sixties. We see the richness of her native land's culture and its natural beauty as she herself rediscovers them after years in England. With their help she makes her way back to health from a black period of alcoholism and debilitating depression." "Nuala has distilled these experiences into a wisdom that could come only from a woman who refused to shrink from life. She escapes the example of her passionate but defeated mother and comes to her own terms with the love she yearns to share with men and women. Even the solitary life, she realizes, that includes neither lover nor child, has its deep contentments."--Jacket.… (meer)
Aus dem Englischen von Renee Zucker. Nuala O'Faolain wächst auf als eins von neun Kindern in einer Familie, die geradewegs auf den Abgrund zusteuert. Die Mutter, eine Trinkerin, hat vor dem Mangel an Geld und Liebe kapituliert. Der Vater, ein bekannter Journalist, ein Bohemien und ein "kleiner Gott" in seiner Welt, schlägt seine Söhne und schickt Nuala, die die Tanzhallen, die zugigen Straßen am Hafen und die Männer liebt, auf die Klosterschule. Nuala rebelliert gegen das Lebensmuster, das im katholischen Irland für Frauen vorgesehen ist: Heirat und Kinder, Alkohol und Gewalt. Und doch sucht sie immer wieder Zuflucht in Affären und trinkt, bis ihr das Leben zu entgleiten droht. Sie studiert in Oxford und arbeitet in Teheran, wird Journalistin und Fernsehproduzentin, aber ihre Liebesbeziehungen scheitern alle. Und dann trifft sie Nell und entdeckt mit ihr zusammen die Welt, bis sie sich trennen.
The author narrates the audio version of this memoir in her lovely Irish voice, which enhances the lyrical nature of her writing. Via tales of childhood and adulthood, family, friends, and lovers the reader is drawn along on the author's search for identity and meaning. I walk away believing that meaning comes and goes, but we must put one foot in front of the other, in an effort to "be like the cat which does not know it will perish". ( )
Read about 70 pages. Good writer but I couldn't stay interested in her life, which was filled with references to people & events I knew little or nothing about. ( )
An interesting read. Love her anecdotes of famous writers she met during her life. What really amazed me was how easily she jumped into casual sex with every man she met. Hah!! ( )
"Irish times columnist Nuala O'Faolain opens her past and looks at it in this searingly honest midlife exploration of the love, pain, loneliness, loss, and self-discovery she has experienced. The result is a classic memoir. Born one of nine children in a penniless North Dublin family headed by an overwhelmed mother and a charming but absent father, Nuala not only survived but pushed at the boundaries of the confining Catholic Ireland she grew up in. The author spends much of her life seeking the sense of self that hostile environment denied to girls and women. But Nuala sees this past with new eyes when she takes the opportunity, in her fifties, to examine the meaning of her life and to review her accomplishments as well as her deep yearning for a sense of fulfillment." "Gifted commentator that she is, Nuala shows us her private thoughts and public actions as they play against the backdrop of the rural Ireland she knew as a child, the blossoming intellectual scene of Dublin in the fifties, and the unspoiled Oxford of the sixties. We see the richness of her native land's culture and its natural beauty as she herself rediscovers them after years in England. With their help she makes her way back to health from a black period of alcoholism and debilitating depression." "Nuala has distilled these experiences into a wisdom that could come only from a woman who refused to shrink from life. She escapes the example of her passionate but defeated mother and comes to her own terms with the love she yearns to share with men and women. Even the solitary life, she realizes, that includes neither lover nor child, has its deep contentments."--Jacket.
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