Are You Somebody
by Nuala O’Faolain
- Where does Nuala find values to live by? What role does her relationship with her parents play in Nuala’s choice of values?
- Although Nuala delights in romance, she has not married or settled into one long-term monogamous relationship. What has she lost and gained as a result?
- How is Nuala able to escape the preoccupation with passion and love that undid her mother?
- What kept Nuala in “the old culture”, even after the women’s movement had begun? What finally altered her perspective?
- The author’s age informs and colors her story. How might this memoir have differed had she written it either earlier or later in life?
- What role do children play in the unfolding of Nuala’s story? How are children betrayed by adults? What do children need from their parents? Why does Nuala believe that she would be a good parent at this stage in her life?
- Discuss the ways in which Nuala’s mother and father succeeded as parents.
- What role does religion, or more specifically the Catholic Church, play in Nuala’s life?
- What meaning(s) does the title hold? The subtitle? Does this book read like it was written “accidentally”?
- On page 102, she mentions that “In North America, people...are happy to go to reunions to recapture the innocence of youth.” Do Americans idealize the past, or are they obsessed with youth? How are the Irish people in this story different?
- On page143, discuss the idea of home and belonging in this memoir. How does Nuala’s life change when she accepts Ireland as “home”?
- One reviewer said, “O’Faolain has come far...it’s odd, then, that given all this hurtling life force, this hard-won happiness, my strongest impression of O’Faolain is that she is running backward–toward the defeated mother of her childhood and toward the Ireland of the past...” Do you agree? Is Nuala happy?
*Questions written by Mount Prospect Public Library Staff
Published 1998
