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Rating: 
Summary: Brutally honest and quietly moving.
Review: "I think you can be born homesick. I think you can have a dislocated heart. No place will do. The most wonderful home in the world full of the most love wouldn't be enough for you - you'd keep looking around for where you belong." The "you," of course, is O'Faolain herself, a restless soul still searching for - love? contentment? self-assurance? - still hungry as she reaches 60, her professional life materially validated by bestsellerdom and floods of heartfelt (often heartbreaking) letters from readers of her first memoir, "Are You Somebody?"Readers of AYS who were swept up by the intimacy and energy of O'Faolain's voice, the unvarnished honesty of her brutal stories of childhood, her hard-won place in Irish journalism and her ongoing, episodic search for love, will find the same frank passion in this second book. Written after the success of AYS and her first novel, "My Dream of You," "Almost There" muses on the changes acclaim has brought - financial security, prestige, Italian holidays and writing sojourns in Manhattan. She describes the writing of the novel and the lover she had at the time - nearly illiterate, married, elderly and secretive - with a clear-eyed distance that combines rueful, wry self-knowledge with raw passion. She shows where she borrowed from real life for her fiction, she tells how AYS affected relationships with friends and old lovers, whose versions differed, sometimes, sharply, with her own. "I hadn't realized before I wrote AYS that I for one need constantly to relearn a simple thing - that I do not understand other people as they understand themselves." There's a great deal in this vein, how "the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written." And there are the things that haven't changed - a deep vein of self-perpetuating loneliness, and, in contrast, an optimistic certainty of her capacity to change. And in the end, she leaves us curious, as she did at the end of AYS - does she work things out with her lover's child? Does she persevere this time? And there's much reflection on age, on how the shortness of time reduces options. Nothing earth-shattering there, but O'Faolain's breath-catching fierceness makes it feel fresh. Fans will love this book and hope for another installment. Newcomers I'm less sure of. There's so much that reflects and illuminates her previous books that new readers will either search those out immediately or lose interest halfway through this one. Cranky, acerbic, sometimes pathetic, O'Faolain possesses the ardor of youth and the (sometimes) wisdom of age.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing story of potential
Review: Enthusiastic Recommend: Almost There by Nuala O'Faolain
This is a memoir of six years in the life of a woman in her 60s. It's her story of struggling with her past, with the long series of things that shaped her into something that she decided she did not want to be. So she changed. O'Faolain's life is nothing like mine - not even remotely like mine. She's Irish. She suffered as a child from the neglect of a drunken mother. She's never been married, has no children. She earned her living being a journalist. She's not really athletic, and that doesn't bug her. One of the few things we have in common is that we both love dogs. But she also goes for cats, which I can take or leave. And yet so much of what she wrote resonated, spoke to me, got me to say right out loud, "Yea, wow, that's it." It's a wonderful read for anyone who thinks it's too late for ... well, for anything. O'Faolain shows that it's never too late. We've all suffered, physically and emotionally. Some more than others, Nuala more than I. But she demonstrates that there is always a way to strike out on a different path if you are willing to work at it. And though it's not easy, there's progress, not always in a hurriedly straight line, but it's there and it's substantial.
Rating:
Summary: Everybody Has a Hungry Heart
Review: Nuala O'Faolain is completely frank and honest without sacrificing elegant prose... sa memoirist unconcerned with image. Her experiences take on a universal quality--I'm not a fifty-something Irish writer whose parents were miserable together (one cold, the other alcoholic) when not being charming. Yet in her descriptions of fear, loneliness, hope I find myself feeling singing "she's killing me softly with her song." This is no feel-good "How I overcame bad times" memoir in which the heroine is homeless/battered/deathly ill but survives "with a little help from my friends." Nuala recounts successes, mistakes, bad judgement, anger, joy without ever portraying herself as a victim. And the result is that her story lands in your gut. Few writers would admit worrying about the cat being lonely if she went out for an evening-- they'd be too self-conscious and worry about looking pathetic. Not Nuala. The result is that she wins us over utterly. This book opens with a great deal more joy than her other books (the wonderful memoir Are You Somebody? and the novel My Dream of You). She recounts with wonder the unexpected success of her memoir and the opportunities it brought her-- the waves of approval from TV talk-show audiences, the trip to New York where she met Frank McCourt, the money. But it didn't ultimately protect her heart from a painful end to a long-standing lesbian relationship, a one-sided affair with a married man, and a troubled relationship with a man she met on line, whose little girl Nuala had to struggle not to resent. I heard O'Faolain read at Colliseum books New York, and she recounted how in Dublin, everyone criticized her for having had an affair with a married man (who, to be fair, did not ever tell her he was married until very very late in the game) while in America, people were shocked at her attitude to the child. Yet in both, O'Faolain is nothing more than honest. Who hasn't felt jealous and wished they didn't? O'Faolain is never malicious, vindictive or cruel. She writes with candor about being down-and-out inside, though material circumstances look well. She's an inspiration in every way-- she gives the reader permission to empathize, to say, "yes, it's like that, and she survived, and I can too". You don't have to have a terrible illness or crushing poverty to have legitimate feelings of despair, and O'Faolain is proof that they can be overcome-- with grace. And her prose is terrific. Simple without being simplistic, somehow she turns a riff on 9/11 to a consideration of voting in Africa.
She's a real writer, and one for the ages-- her main focus is on herself, but her gaze takes on all humanity.
Rating:
Summary: Everybody Has a Hungry Heart
Review: Nuala O'Faolain is completely frank and honest without sacrificing elegant prose... sa memoirist unconcerned with image. Her experiences take on a universal quality--I'm not a fifty-something Irish writer whose parents were miserable together (one cold, the other alcoholic) when not being charming. Yet in her descriptions of fear, loneliness, hope I find myself feeling singing "she's killing me softly with her song." This is no feel-good "How I overcame bad times" memoir in which the heroine is homeless/battered/deathly ill but survives "with a little help from my friends." Nuala recounts successes, mistakes, bad judgement, anger, joy without ever portraying herself as a victim. And the result is that her story lands in your gut. Few writers would admit worrying about the cat being lonely if she went out for an evening-- they'd be too self-conscious and worry about looking pathetic. Not Nuala. The result is that she wins us over utterly. This book opens with a great deal more joy than her other books (the wonderful memoir Are You Somebody? and the novel My Dream of You). She recounts with wonder the unexpected success of her memoir and the opportunities it brought her-- the waves of approval from TV talk-show audiences, the trip to New York where she met Frank McCourt, the money. But it didn't ultimately protect her heart from a painful end to a long-standing lesbian relationship, a one-sided affair with a married man, and a troubled relationship with a man she met on line, whose little girl Nuala had to struggle not to resent. I heard O'Faolain read at Colliseum books New York, and she recounted how in Dublin, everyone criticized her for having had an affair with a married man (who, to be fair, did not ever tell her he was married until very very late in the game) while in America, people were shocked at her attitude to the child. Yet in both, O'Faolain is nothing more than honest. Who hasn't felt jealous and wished they didn't? O'Faolain is never malicious, vindictive or cruel. She writes with candor about being down-and-out inside, though material circumstances look well. She's an inspiration in every way-- she gives the reader permission to empathize, to say, "yes, it's like that, and she survived, and I can too". You don't have to have a terrible illness or crushing poverty to have legitimate feelings of despair, and O'Faolain is proof that they can be overcome-- with grace. And her prose is terrific. Simple without being simplistic, somehow she turns a riff on 9/11 to a consideration of voting in Africa.
She's a real writer, and one for the ages-- her main focus is on herself, but her gaze takes on all humanity.
Rating:
Summary: Passionate and excruciating
Review: Nuala O'Faolain is so vivacious, so funny and filled with life, so honest in her writing that I find I can't put her books down, and yet I find I'm either laughing or cringing, one or the other, depending on the page or the paragraph. I swing violently from pro to con as I read anything she's written; in this memoir, she spends so much time celebrating (it sounds often like bragging) about the success of her last memoir, and then confesses, horribly, about the dark side of her feelings against the young daughter of the man she's in love with. But she is also insightful and brilliantly observant and filled with hope. I don't think I've ever been so compelled by a writer and at the same time, repulsed. It's her narcissism that makes her books so compulsively readable, combined with genuinely gorgeous writing. I can't wait for the next one, and I'll laugh and cringe some more.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring and less than mediocre
Review: The author should stick to her newspaper columns, as her chatty style gets horribly boring in a book with over 200 pages.
She indulges in self-praise for being so erudite, stating all the books she read. Gee!!!
Then she claims that Milan Kundera is a mediocre writer, that's why she would not read him. Well, if she never did, how does she know? How dare she insulting such a talented writer? At least books like Kundera's "unbearable lightness of being" have profundity and style. Something that this crappy autobiography really misses out.
Rating: 
Summary: Nuala's Long Journey
Review: This is the first book by Nuala Faolain that I read so I don't have anything to compare it with. I am also a middle aged woman so many of the statements she made hit me right in the chest.
I could feel her pain. Although I related to her story, I found the book tedious at times. I would not recommend this book for everyone. I don't believe that women in their twenties or thirties would fully appreciate Naula's story.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Brutal
Review: This is the first book I have read by author Nuala O'Faolain, but it far from the first autobiographical piece I've read. The latter part of my opening comment allows me to state without reservation that I have never read a more brutally and painfully candid work. Using the word beautiful may seem contradictory but it is her unstinting honesty about everyone, herself most of all, that makes this such a remarkable memoir. I don't think I would have gotten through the book if she had only been candid about everyone except herself. Her willingness to place herself, fears, regrets and anger out on view for the world to read is nothing short of remarkable. This book covers about 6 years from her first memoir which apparently had the same sort of candor although she did offer it to people who were included prior to its publication. How much she may have changed is not entirely clear, but judging by what was included here I doubt she changed very much. The book is also a philosophical exercise by a woman who has seen the majority of her life and is brutally honest about what she is and is not willing to do with the balance of the 16 and three-quarter years the actuarial tables allot to her. Initially the most startling part of the book was toward the end when she spoke of the 8 year old daughter of her partner. At first I was put off, and then my reaction changed completely. If there has ever been a case of the truth hurts, and the truth will set you free, in a manner of speaking, this lady has written it. I don't know how many males will read this book but they should. Much of what she discusses is not bounded by gender, and when there are gender specific issues there are plenty of issues that males can plug in. This is not an easy book to read but when I finally finished I found myself hoping for all the best for Ms. O'Faolain and anyone else who has experienced the pain she has. If we all could view our lives with such honesty, my guess is the level of pain in most lives would be greatly diminished. Ms. Nuala O'Faolain, I wish you all the best!
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Follow-Up to the Great AYS
Review: This moving, thought provoking, warm, witty reflection by Irish journalist Nuala O'Faolain become an intimate conversation with a friend as it is read in the author's inimitable voice. "...I believed myself a failure....., " Ms. O'Faolain opines. "I hadn't acquired any of the usual rewards of the middle of life - I didn't have anyone to love or to love me. I had no child, no other achievement, no money. I quietly drank a bit too much wine every night." These words follow the break-up of a 14 year relationship with Nell, an Irish feminist. Despairing of ever maintaining a loving relationship, Ms. O'Faolain seeks solace in reading, classical music, an adopted mongrel pup, and, of course, her work. Throughout "Almost There" is a recurring theme: the search for love. Following Nell Ms. O'Faolain embarks on an affair with Joseph, an unlikely paramour if there ever was one. He is an ordinary older man with silver hair, a married truck driver who left school at 11, and found no need to be literate. Joseph is succeeded by John, a Brooklyn lawyer whom she met through an online dating service. She is now 61. He is twice divorced, the father of an 8-year-old daughter. Of her late-in-life new love she remarks that it is a time when "good things matter to their fullest extent, because you know exactly how rare they are." Some material found in "Are You Somebody" is revisited in this follow-up memoir. She reiterates the price to be paid for speaking out in a country that "put the lid on things." For the Irish, she writes, "Silence was the defensive strategy of a people who did not believe situations can be changed and did not imagine they could ever get away from each other...." And there again is the crux of the matter: the belief that she will forever be haunted by her mother's neglect. With the book's closing lines the author paints an imaginary reunion: her mother is sitting on a barstool, and moves over to make room for her daughter. Just as she does Ms. O'Faolain turns her back and walks out the door.
"Almost There" is rich, passionate, and ribboned with sadness. It is an uncommon examination of human longing and loneliness often sparked by Ms. O'Faolain's wry, self-effacing humor. It is tribute to a country written and read by one still searching for her home. - Gail Cooke
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