How does one write gorgeous, lyrical, haunting prose about topics that reach to the very depths of human sadness?
About the deep grinding poverty of mid-20th century Ireland, land of no birth control and females as baby-producing machines.
About loss and longing, the physical and emotional battering of children, the abuse and oppression of women, the ache of adult loneliness, the vacancy of wanton sex, the invisibility wrought by old age.
About the alcohol and drugs to which so many victims of the above desperately flee.
And about the lifelong search for love, identity and self-acceptance that proves so elusive in the wake of so much tragedy.
You do it how Irish writer Nuala O’Faolain did it in her surprise bestseller, “Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman.” With wrenching, sometimes brutal honesty that takes acute measure of all things human and leaves nothing outside the ...
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