Are You Somebody? ****
By Nuala O'Faolain
Nuala O'Faolain, who died May 8, attempts to come to terms with being Irish in "Are You Somebody?" and I can't give any more coherent review to this memoir than that. Whenever she seems about to uncover some insight or point about Irish life, her answer forks into several possibilities and ends with "I don't know." I have, in fact, never read a memoir in which "I don't know" appears so many times.
The Irish (and Irish-Americans) can be divided into two camps: 1) those who revel in their heritage, own copies of "Riverdance" and the Irish tenors, and 2) those like author Mary McCarthy who revile it. (O'Faolain says McCarthy "feared the sogginess of the Irish so much that even when the plane stopped over in Shannon, she wouldn't get out in case she was sucked into the bog.")
O'Faolain comes down somewhere between reveling and reviling. Her narrative is matter-of-fact--her journalistic roots show here--generally clear-eyed and often self-lacerating. All that gives the memoir a ring of truth. And yet the episodes presented here, wonderful as they are--life in a Catholic girls’ school, mammy’s drinking, da’s philandering, a walk with the dog on Christmas Day, a fleeting connection to the Irish past on an archaeological dig--leave the reader feeling that O’Faolian has not presented the whole truth.
The last chapter, "Afterwords," in which O'Faolain discusses the effect of the memoir on her life and those who have read it, is problematic. The narrative goes all muzzy and fey, as if she'd had a few too many down at McDaid's, and holding on to the literal truth just got to be too much.
Maybe in the end that’s what Irish-ness is: too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment