- Title: Almost There The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman
- Author: Nuala O’Faolain
- Year Published: 2003 (Riverhead Books)
- Year Purchased: 2005/2006
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: I love O’Faolain’s straightforward and elegant prose style, proof that readability does not have to equal simplicity. Almost There is a follow-up to Are You Somebody, her searing and evocative first memoir. I loved it so much that I was truly giddy when I found this volume in the middle of a stack of clearance books. She is one of those naturalist prose-poets of the everyday, recounting the events of her turbulent life with warmth, grace and a total absence of pity or dramatics. Her candor is believable. True or not, it is a remarkable feat for a memoirist to achieve-and not once, but twice. To feel the full import of her story, and the rare beauty of her spare writing, I suggest reading the books back to back.
- Motivation: Are You Somebody is one of my favourite contemporary memoirs.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 55: “I had waited to go on in a small dressing room, almost paralyzed with fear, because I knew my reputation and my family’s and Nell’s was going to be changed by the interview, and my standing with colleagues and bosses and former lovers and the nuns who’d taught me-anyone I could think of. But there really is such a thing as grace. It’s the word I want to use, anyway, for a rightness of behavior that kicks in out of nowhere.”
- Happiness Scale: 8
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea.
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A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 
This sounds good. I haven’t read a memoir in ages! I like funny ones, like David Sedaris. He cracks me up!
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I like David Sedaris, too (although I like Amy more). O’Faolain’s memoirs are excellent; I highly recommend them.
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Oh dear. I had no idea who she was & had to google her. She sounds like a remarkable woman, and did I read there is a documentary being made about her?
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I also read that there is some kind of documentary being made, fingers crossed it is true. She was definitely remarkable, and her memoirs are amongst my favourites of recent decades. Her biography of “The Queen of the Underworld”, The Story of Chicago May, is also wonderful.
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