My Dream of You

Rating:
Summary: Stinging, Scalding, Uplifting
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not a Wasted Word or Thought
Review: This is a book where every word and every thought have weight. It is not easy to read, but it is not about easy subjects--families and memories and love and betrayal and truth and history. Kathleen, the narrator here, begins her story crippled in some way be all of these things. If she is certainly not healed byt he end of the book, she is more self-aware and has freed herself to the point where she can allow herself to live in the present, and maybe in the future, instead of always focussing her life and anger on the past. She is a complicated, not necessarily likeable character, but one of the saving graces of her pilgrimage back to Ireland is that she meets up with a succession of people who are able to see through the barricades of her life and give her credit for things she is not able to credit in herself.

The historical narrative of the Talbot adultery and divorce trial, set in the time of the famine, when civilization was stripped away so terribly, and Kathleen's retelling of those events, goes through several different versions here. It is clear early on that we will never know the truth of these events, and that is both sad and also tantilizingly provocative, as Kathleen realizes as she lives her own experience through these characters.

Some reviewers have compared this book to A. S. Byatt's Possession, which is one of my favorite books. It is, in its weaving of multiple tales and in its prickly, complex characters. Both are books that deserve thought and respect.

Rating:
Summary: An Exquisite Debut
Review: Nuala O'Faolain's debut novel, MY DREAM OF YOU, is a tender and exquisite exploration of passion, romance and desire. The protagonist, middle-aged Kathleen de Burca, is an Irish travel writer living in London. She is a solitary woman living in a world that requires all kinds of props and inventions just to get her through the day. But, of course, when someone lives in a world that requires props and inventions that world is inevitably going to collapse so I wasn't really surprised when Kathleen's world came crashing down around her.

Although Kathleen has been living her life devoid of passion (a series of tawdry one night stands takes passion's place in her world), she is a woman who is desperately in love with passion and desperately in need of it in her life. She even tells us that she "believed in passion the way other people believed in God." It is passion, combined with crisis, that leads Kathleen back to her home in Ireland and to a different kind of writing.

Leaving travel writing behind, Kathleen goes to Ireland to research a book about Marianne Talbot and William Mullen (real people) and Marianne's famous divorce that took place during the nineteenth century. The facts are sketchy and conflicting and Kathleen has to imagine many of them, even providing alternate scenarios. Presumably, a wealthy English landowner named Richard Talbot sued his wife, Marianne, for divorce on the grounds that she had engaged in adultery with one of his grooms, William Mullen. One thing is definitely known...the relationship was one of the deepest passion and the end of the affair, at least for Marianne, was quite tragic. Kathleen has long been interested in the case, but it takes a tragedy to get her to return to Ireland and investigate more in depth.

The background against which this story is set is the An Gorta Mor, or the Great Famine (Irish Potato Famine). O'Faolain has done a wonderful job in recreating this historical period. We really feel we get to know the Irish people during the time of the famine and O'Faolain lets us delve very deeply into their relationships with each other as well.

The entire book doesn't take place in the past...not by a long shot. There are many "present day" characters as well, whose lives and passions come to haunt Kathleen. Among these are her deceased mother, her sister, her brother and sister-in-law, her gay friend, an Irish innkeeper and a man with whom Kathleen, herself, finds some measure of passion, even though it's a little misplaced.

All of the characters in MY DREAM OF YOU are wonderfully drawn and all are quite intense, even if, as is the case with some, their intensity is quite a bit below the surface. It's easy to identity with and have sympathy with these characters. We understand them, we see shadows of ourselves in them, we feel what they feel.

The most likable character in the book is probably Kathleen, herself. She's by far not one of those "perfect" romance novel heroines. She's middle-aged, she's questioning her roots and her own lack of passion and she's far from perfect, all of which serve to endear her to us even more. And, as Kathleen researches the deep passion that consumed both Marianne and William, she explores the reasons why this kind of passion is absent from her own life. Eventually, Kathleen is presented with a life-altering choice, but to give you even a hint of what it entails here, or its outcome, would not be fair to this wonderful book.

MY DREAM OF YOU is a slow paced novel. Even though it does have a definite plot line and interweaving stories, it is heavily dependent on its characters for depth and they do give this lovely book much, much depth and resonance. O'Faolain's writing is clear and precise and, in some places, lyrical, but never overly so. I thought the writing fit the story and the characters perfectly.

O'Faolain does a marvelous job of wrapping up both the nineteenth century narrative and the present day one. She wisely avoids a "feel good" ending, but she does end the book on precisely the right note...one that is romantic and tender and poignant, and, in the case of the nineteenth century story, tragic, as well.

MY DREAM OF YOU is an exquisite book. I would recommend it to anyone who loves character driven novels, literary novels or novels that encompass what it means to be Irish, for, in the end, Kathleen finds that she is not only a woman but she is most definitely an Irish woman as well.

Rating:
Summary: An experience of compassion
Review: I was amazed by the variety of reactions to this book of Nuala O'Faolain's, which I found touching, insightful, and full of compassion. Kathleen Burke, the protagonist, is a woman with whom I identify in her search for love and meaning. She only gradually comes to understand why she has made certain choices throughout her life, and often these reasons go back to something in her family relationships. She sounded real to me, a woman of middle age who has begun to realize what lies ahead. As in real life, these flashes of insight come partially and sometimes obscurely. But the emphasis on learning to live actively, to forgive the past (especially one's parents), to make choices that will increase loyalty and friendship, grows steadily firmer in Kathleen and in the reader. The book is written beautifully, especially in its descriptions of countryside. I read the beginning pages on line and was immediately convinced I had to have the entire book. I found it an enriching experience, slow to develop (as life is), not entirely finished, (as life is also), but bringing about a deepening appreciation of how precious is every encounter.

Rating:
Summary: An Imperfect Heroine
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Gleaning Pangs from a Timeless Hunger
Review: One recent afternoon, whilst browsing in my neighborhood bookshop, this novel's enchantingly lovely jacket cover caught my eye. The description it bore - a story of loneliness and passion, delved within another story of loneliness and passion - seemed exactly fitting to what I'd longed to be reading at that moment. I therefore immediately procured it, took it home, and immersed myself within.

I quickly found that though this wasn't the riveting, can't-put-it-down kind of read I'd been counting on, it certainly was an endearing one. Nuala O'Faolain's writing has a richly textured, yet somehow quiet quality about it, that tends to draw one intimately into the story.

Kathleen de Burca is an expatriate Irishwoman on the brink of 50, who's been living in a London basement apartment and employed as a travel writer for over two decades. She's estranged from her family, and her work colleagues are her closest intimate friends. When her best friend suddenly dies, she is not only slapped full in the face with a grief she has never before known, but confronted also with the devastating realization that she is truly and utterly alone, and that her present course precludes that she will be so for the remainder of her life.

Kathleen never does come right out and say it, but the terror and despair she feels is palpable. So she packs up and moves out of her basement apartment (and I must herein state that even though I applauded Kathleen's decision, I felt terribly sorry for "Next Door's Cat," with whom she had shared many of her dinners). She then takes indefinite leave from her job to journey back to Ireland to investigate a divorce case from a century-and-a-half ago, which occurred toward the end of the Irish Potato Famine: a case which had fascinated her ever since she had learnt of it while in her mid-20's.

The divorce case involves an affair between the English wife of an Irish landlord and their Irish servant -- and what makes the case so fascinating, at least to Kathleen is, in her words: "I was interested, always, in any story about passion, so I was interested in Mrs. Talbot and William Mullan. I believed in passion the way other people believed in God: everything fell into place around it. Even before I started mooching around after boys when I was fourteen, I'd understood, watching my mother, that passion was the name of the thing she was pursuing, as she trawled through novel after novel. And it was extraordinary to me that the Talbot affair happened when it did- just after the very worst year of the potato famine."

In Ireland, Kathleen stays with an earthy and agreeable Irish family, and makes friends with a few of the local personalities. Her past is deeply painful, and it keeps creeping into her thoughts. She briefly visits her brother and his wife and child, who are the only family she has left in Ireland; then she meets a married man, and finally gets a taste of the passion she'd been barren of for so many years. Meantime, she's fleshing out her story of the Talbot affair, but in the end her discoveries are not only rare and hard to come by, but are actually materializing into something quite bleak. Her depictions of the massive devastation caused by the famine are, in fact, some of the most shocking and heart-wrenching passages I've ever read.

In the end, it's essentially Kathleen discovering Herself, and in the very essence of that word: she discovers her past, her family, her heritage, her country, her regrets, her longings, her failings, and even her own unique beauty. The factual lives of Marianne Talbot and William Mullan may remain forever shrouded in mystery - for it's most likely that their affair never even took place - but their starving ghosts certainly embody vivid life in O'Faolain's writing:

"The habitat of their passion, where they roamed like two animals on a great plain, was silence. Not perfect silence-- there were always the sounds of the household and sounds coming in from the estate. Sheep, penned in a front yard. The creak of turf carts coming in from the bog. But the couple were habitually mute. Except that they panted and grunted when they forgot themselves in each other. Then afterwards there was peace, and silence again. And after that, she lived in a hot dream of him."

Rating:
Summary: What an Empty Existence
Review: My Dream of You is told in the first person perspective of Kathleen De Burca. A woman of a particular age (fiftyish), she's led an empty, sad existence her entire life. She lives in the same dungeonesque flat in London as she had for the past umpteenth year. She works as a travel writer for the same small publication for as many years, with the same drab coworkers. Single, Kathleen's life consists of a series of brief affairs and one night stands as she searches for something she will never find because she doesn't know what she's looking for. After Jimmy, her best friend and coworker dies suddenly of a heart attack, Kathleen comes to a crossroads in her life. Quitting her ho-hum job, she travels to her homeland of Ireland in hopes of writing a novel on the infamous Talbot divorce which occurred during the Potato Famine.

Kathleen begins writing a rather sordid, ficticious account of the doomed union of the Talbots, but eventually has to abandon her imagined take on the scandal as evidence is uncovered which sheds new light of the people involved.

I found this a rambling, boring read. Kathleen has so many flash backs, it's hard to stay interested in the present plot.
I had much higher hopes for this book.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful sense of person and place
Review: I recently saw Nuala O'Faolain speak and was very taken with her personality--you could tell she's a good storyteller--self-deprecating, funny and yet poignant. I read this novel directly after reading her memoir, and it's obviously a very close parallel to real life. I loved the troubled but valiant character of Caitlin de Burka and the look at Ireland, both today and during the 1850s potato famine. Learned tons and cried buckets at the end as Cait holds out for something better in her life. Reminded me of Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career somehow. And could the story within the story end any more affectingly? Strong recommendation for readers of literary women's fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Nuala O¿Faolain¿s first novel, believe it or not
Review: O'Faolain usually writes journalism, memoir, essays - all nonfiction. In her first journey into the world of novel-writing, she comes up a winner with My Dream of You. it's an intriguing tale about a female Irish travel writer who is seeking the deeper truths behind a notorious divorce case during the Great Famine so many years ago. In the process of digging into the buried facts, the writer comes to question her own life choices.
Nuala O'Faolain's intelligence shines through the prose in this book, as she reveals a tenderness for her characters.

Rating:
Summary: Splendid Example Of Women's Fiction From An Irish View
Review: Nuala O'Faolain combines a gripping yarn about an extramarital affair on an Anglo-Irish estate immediately following the great famine of the 1840's with a soul-searching quest undertaken by a contemporary travel writer; the latter is unquestionably a thinly disguised fictional version of herself. "My Dream Of You" may not set new literary standards in women's fiction, but it deserves recognition for its spellbinding, lyrical prose. Those who were captivated by O'Faolain's memoir "Are You Somebody" will enjoy this novel. But those interested in two gripping tales woven successfully together may find it a less interesting, and occasionally tedious, read. The best parts of this novel are devoted to the early 1850's affair; unfortunately I did not find as compelling, the saga of travel writer Kathleen de Burca.