Resumo de My Dream Of You - Nuala O'Faolain

A beautifully written novel, with skillfully intertwined personal and cultural histories, Nuala O'Faolain's "My Dream of You" tells the age-old story of a highly accomplished and successful woman who has missed out on the mysteries of family and home. However, instead of steering us to empathize with the main character, O'Faolain keeps pointing at her crippling selfishness and horrendous choices. Just as Frank McCourt explains the Irish psyche by painting a picture of his impossible conditions in childhood, O'Faolain explores her characters in the context of hunger and desperation. We assume that an emotionally hungry person would welcome regular nourishment, but ironically O'Faolain's main character behaves in a way that rejects love and emotional connection.
When 49-year-old Kathleen DeBurca learns of the death of her old friend Jimmy, she retreats to her apartment for days and, in an effort to keep her mind busy, reads everything in her apartment shelf by shelf. Among the reading was a transcript of the Talbot divorce judgment that occurred in her native Ireland in 1856. Kathleen had come into possession of the transcript years earlier, when she was in love with an English law student. In those fulfilling days, the place she and her lover called home was also the place where their passion thrived.
Now, living alone in a dank basement apartment, or traveling to distant destinations as a travel writer, passion was something she experienced apart from her life. Sex was an accommodation she made to an occasional stranger. "Sex was a hotel thing. I don't think I'd have liked to disturb the perfect nothingness of where I lived."
Reading the judgment now, with its references to Mrs. Talbot's intimacy with an Irish hired hand, has opened up questions about not only Kathleen's personal past, but also the Irish famine as the backdrop of the Talbot adultery. She decides to journey to her homeland to research the case and possibly write a book about it. In Ireland, she faces her past, particularly her guilt about leaving her chronically depressed and dying mother.
Kathleen is faced with difficult choices to make, regarding the Talbot story and her own future as a woman, friend, and family member. She can make those decisions based on fictional ideals, or based on the realities of committing to people.

Resumos Relacionados