My Dream of You

I am not a middle-age woman trying to figure out how, where and why all the good years of sex vanished. I don’t have hair the color of overcast skies, the corners of my eyes aren’t roosts for a flock of crows, my blood hasn’t been recycled through my body more times than there are stars in heaven.

But for one week, I was all of those things. For seven days, I slipped into the skin of Kathleen de Burca, the journalist on a passion-quest in Nuala O’Faolain’s debut novel My Dream of You. I felt the ache in Kathleen’s bones, the stabs to her heart, the squeeze in her lungs as she goes in search of love in the twilight. Ms. O’Faolain (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Kathleen) is to be commended for causing a show more still-this-side-of-40 male to so completely inhabit a paper-and-ink character with breasts and menopausal issues. I know Kathleen. And, after your 530-page relationship, you will, too—no matter if you’re 20, 70, Catholic, Jewish, or have hair on your chest.

Stories like Kathleen’s are too-easily dismissed with a sniff and an eye-roll as “women’s fictionâ€? and are either anointed by Oprah or filmed as a Lifetime Television for Women movie (or both). But there is more to My Dream of You than meets the bodice-ripping eye.

This is a romance, yes; but it is one that is filled with such elegance, honesty and energy that it quickly ascends to something greater than another book for the mid-life-crisis women’s aisle at Barnes & Noble. It is a story for any of us who have grasped at second chances, and prayed our fingers weren’t too slick with nervous sweat.

O’Faolain, a former television producer and writer for The Irish Times also went close to the bone with the character in her first book Are You Somebody?: herself. The memoir of growing up in lower-class Ireland was not as tragic-gritty as Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, but it was no less compelling as O’Faolain described the neglect from her alcoholic mother and, later, the years spent trying to find both a career and a love life in male-dominated Irish society.

In Are You Somebody?, she writes, “A woman past the age where she might be contemplated as a sexual partner is hardly seen. She turns into a silhouette.â€?

This is the shadow world Kathleen inhabits when we first meet her in My Dream of You. Most of her journalism career has been spent writing for a travel magazine in London, a job which has allowed her to jet around the globe, always on the run from herself. When her best friend and colleague dies, Kathleen is suddenly cut adrift. Nearing fifty, she’s reached the point where she starts to take a long hard look at her perpetually single life, examining past flings and committed relationships with a longing gaze. We bear with her through scenes of loveless sex—sad, painful episodes which lower her dignity as a woman. “Make it not too late!â€? she prays in desperation as she sets off a physical journey to Ireland and a spiritual sojourn to the soul.

She goes to Ireland in search of answers to an 1856 court case, Talbot v. Talbot, which has always intrigued her. It concerns the alleged adultery between and English landlord’s lonely wife, Marianne, and their Irish servant, Mullan. During the country's infamous Potato Famine, the two lovers cross class lines in what witnesses describe as a passionate affair. After being away from the Emerald Isle for thirty years, Kathleen travels to the scene of the crime, Ballygall, and starts poking around the long-cold ashes of the Talbot affair. But in so doing, she stokes the fires of her own memories and starts wondering, “Is it too late for true love to find me?â€?

Like A.S. Byatt’s Possession, the book shifts between Kathleen’s investigation and testimonial narratives from the Talbot trial. Kathleen begins writing her own book about the affair and it’s not hard to make the link between herself and the way she describes the 19th-century lovers: “They must have seemed like luscious fruit to each other. Their bodies must have ripened on each other.â€? Or this particularly sensual paragraph:
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 far 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.

The story is given to us in language which barely has any clothes on the words. The simple language is only occasionally overwrought and just this side of cliché; but most of the sentences flow free as the River Shannon. There’s an undeniably compelling passion O’Faolain imparts to everything her pen touches. And I say “penâ€? rather than “keyboardâ€? because I can only imagine her writing the book’s first draft in longhand—that’s how intimate she makes this reading experience.

Through Marianne and Mullan, Kathleen comes to find her purpose in life—the whys, wherefores and whims of sex; and through her characters, one can guess, O’Faolain reaches conclusions about her own place in the world. In this way, My Dream of You is a very wide-awake examination of one writer’s life. This is therapeutic fiction in one of its finest hours.

Is My Dream of You a perfect book (whatever that is)? Not entirely. It’s too long for its own good and many pages are squandered on Kathleen returning to the same lovesick conclusions. But these are easy to forgive when you’ve got such a remarkable character, and an author who generously heaps dollops of herself on every page. Kathleen lingers long in the memory and it’s not easy to slough off the skin in which O’Faolain has encased the reader—even for us fortysomething males. show less

This is a hard book to sum up with plotlines and character descriptions. It is brilliantly written, wry, compassionate. I learned about O'Faolain, the Famine, myself. Not an easy read in every way, but very much worthwhile.

May 2014: when reviewing Cecilia Ahern's A Place Called Here, I wrote:

I can't help thinking of a truly powerful novel, also by an Irish woman writer, also about a pretty screwed up woman who almost inadvertently stumbles down a path to insight and healing--[My Dream of You] by [[Nuala O’Faolain]]. The difference is profound. O’Faolain is not attempting to lead us into any great insight, she is just telling her story, but what a contrast. I was transported by the writing, the character, the story, perhaps because show more the author in that case was writing from truth, not from plot outline or metaphor. When her character screws up, it is painful. When she does herself a favour, it is a joy. Ahern's protagonist on the other hand is almost a caricature, and although in real life I would greatly sympathize with her, in the book I am merely curious. show less

Irish born Kathleen De Burca has arrived at a crossroads in her life. Nearing fifty she loses her best friend and coworker to a heart attack. As a travel writer, Kathleen has lived in London for nearly thirty years and has never married or had children. Jimmy was the closest person she could call family. But, when she is presented with the lifetime achievement award she was supposed to share with her best friend she realizes there is more to life than travel miles and exotic venues. Why not go home to Ireland? Why not research a century old crime that has long fascinated her?
So begins Kathleen's story. Her past is as complicated as her future is a blank slate. Giving up everything, she lays herself bare to the tragedies of the past; show more remembrances of long ago transgressions; all the cringe-worthy scars of yesterday. But, as she says on page 408, "Tragedies end." And so they do. Kathleen learns to pick up the pieces and face the black slate of tomorrow with a different kind of courage than it took in order to come home.
As an aside, I felt the ending gave O'Faolain room for a sequel. Just saying. show less

Irish born Kathleen De Burca has arrived at a crossroads in her life. Nearing fifty she loses her best friend and coworker to a heart attack. As a travel writer, Kathleen has lived in London for nearly thirty years and has never married or had children. Jimmy was the closest person she could call family. But, when she is presented with the lifetime achievement award she was supposed to share with her best friend she realizes there is more to life than travel miles and exotic venues. Why not go home to Ireland? Why not research a century old crime that has long fascinated her?
So begins Kathleen's story. Her past is as complicated as her future is a blank slate. Giving up everything, she lays herself bare to the tragedies of the past; show more remembrances of long ago transgressions; all the cringe-worthy scars of yesterday. But, as she says on page 408, "Tragedies end." And so they do. Kathleen learns to pick up the pieces and face the black slate of tomorrow with a different kind of courage than it took in order to come home.
As an aside, I felt the ending gave O'Faolain room for a sequel. Just saying.
**Molloy's reading of My Dream of You was fantastic! ** show less

Kathleen de Burca ist bereit, bis an die Grenzen zu gehen. Die Grenzen der Liebe, die sie seit Jahren vermisst. Dabei stößt sie nicht nur auf die ebenso skandalöse wie tragische Geschichte einer Amour fou, sondern vor allem auf einen Mann, der ihre Gefühle herausfordert. Vielleicht zum letzten Mal. Ein großartiger Roman über die Schmerzen der Leidenschaft und die Unbedingtheit der Liebe.

This was an interesting book about an Irish transplant travel writer in London. The story flip flops between her present life and her reflection on her past. It also flips way back to a story she's researching about an affair between an Irish groom and an English lady during the potato famine years (think mid-eighteen hundreds). I liked this book because it described a reality in Ireland that we sometime as tourists and travelers don't see about a place. It was also amazing to realize the shear amount of people who suffered, died, and immigrated. The book did tend to ramble and I think she could have cut the story down in half but it did really make you get to know the main character.

Kathleen De Burca, an Irish travel writer living in London, trows over her life there to return to Ireland and write a book. What she is chasing down is an old scandal - an affair in mid century Ireland between the wife of an English landlord and her Irish servant during the time of the Irish potato famine. Also woven into the narrative is Kathleen's own story - tragically disfunctional families, sharp-eyed feminist critiques of contemporary society, aging,, sex and friendship. A beautifully written book about longing, regret, choices and change.