Are You Somebody? Nuala O’Faolain (1940-2008)

Combing through the "Irish sports pages" (a.k.a., the obituaries) the other day, I saw that the Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain is dead of lung cancer at the age of 68. If you're carrying baggage around, it might as well be packed, and Nuala O'Faolain's sure was. In her brilliant memoir, Are You Somebody, published when she was in her mid-fifties (yes!), O'Faolain unpacked some of her baggage and shared it around. She was one of a large Dublin brood, and her early life contained a full measure