As a columnist for this newspaper, Nuala O'Faolain never shied from expressing the truth as she saw it - whether people liked it or not. When she turned her hand to writing a memoir, she took a similarly full- frontal approach and Are You Somebody? became an international best-seller, highly praised for its heart-on-the-sleeve honesty.
Since then, she has written a novel, and, as the opening chapters of My Dream of You clearly show, she is a storyteller of considerable power. Her heroine, Kathleen de Burca, is a middle-aged travel writer who, after the death of her best friend, temporarily abandons her life in London in order to research a book about a Lady Chatterly-ish love affair between a Famine landlord's young English wife and their Irish groom. SO far, so simple: a historical whodunnit whose vivid evocations of the suffering of Famine times are cleverly interwoven with a fine awareness of the contemporary Irish landscape, both physical and social. But then Kathleen falls in love, with disastrous consequences for the novel's equilibrium. The narrative veers wildly into romance fiction territory, with giggle-inducing results: honesty about sex between lumpy middle-aged lovers is one thing, but the scene in which the gallant Shay removes his dentures in flagrante is a scene too far. In fiction, maybe honesty isn't always the best policy.
