In praise of Nuala O’Faolain, by Rosita Boland

I was living in Galway in 1996, the autumn that Nuala O’Faolain’s Are You Somebody was published. I bought the book, and became utterly absorbed in it. There was something both startling and exhilarating in the experience of reading such an honest account about being a woman in Ireland. Originally intended as an introduction to the main meat of the book, a collection of her Irish Times columns, the first 200 pages were compelling memoir. I knew as I read it that I was finally hearing a voice that was in some way representing me and so many other Irish women who had opinions and unconventional, sometimes messy lives. Are You Somebody made a feminist of me, although I don’t think I knew that until now. That day in Galway, I looked up from Are You Somebody in Café de Journal on Quay Street, and realised Nuala O’Faolain was sitting at the other side of the café. She signed the book for me, and it was hard to know which of us was more delighted.

"Between those two – landscape of stone, and wide blue air – is where I am."
Nuala O'Faolain

Other favourites: Dervla Murphy and Selina Guinness

Rosita Boland is an Irish Times journalist