Makioka Sisters Book Club

This past week, Irish novelist, memoirist, and journalist Nuala O’Faolain died at the age of 68.

Several years ago we read O’Faolain’s memoir, Are You Somebody? I didn’t make the meeting and I didn’t read the book. Then a couple of years later, I had the opportunity to take a memoir writing workshop with her. Again, for some reason, I was not all that interested. But my tuition to the workshop was paid for – a sort of stipend for serving on a panel for the school – and so I finally cracked open her memoir.

I was impressed by it, but intimidated as well. The narrator of Are You Somebody? seemed to have a cool detachment toward her own life and toward her family as well. In writing her first book, O’Faolain, a former BBC reporter and the daughter of a newspaper columnist, revisited and revealed the ugly moments of her life in a way I found startling. It was almost as if a reporter were writing about strangers, but these were the people who were most dear to her, this woman she described so unsparingly was herself. She offered few excuses, and even those few she reserved for her loved ones, never herself.

After reading Are You Somebody? I thought its author must be very brave and very intelligent, but perhaps a little ruthless as well. Did she have the kind of warmth a teacher would need to create an environment safe enough for a productive memoir-writing workshop? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think all writing workshops need be uncritical love-ins. But a memoir-writing workshop, one where strangers would have to share the details of their lives in rough-draft form? I was nervous.

It turned out that Nuala was nothing like the sleek intellectual I had imagined her to be. She was warm and accepting, physically affectionate, emotional, with the kindest, most expressive face, a face with no masks at all. A nearly naked soul, and a generous one as well. And then there was her lovely soft brogue, a voice that seemed to have no anger in it, the voice of the perfect bedtime storyteller, one who would patiently unspool the thread of a story clear though to the end.

In the warm and safe environment her presence created, we, her dozen-plus pupils, most of us published writers, were able to reveal things about ourselves more honestly than many of us had ever managed before. During breaks we whispered as much to one another, amazed, a little bit afraid to speak too loudly lest we break the spell Nuala had conjured for us. She somehow did this despite the fact that the BBC taped most of the workshop for an upcoming documentary, and so none of knew whether what was shared was actually private at all. In theory, every raw word and memory might have ended up broadcast to thousands. Yet, I don’t think I’ve ever felt safer in a writing workshop environment. Yes, many of the other writers in attendance were incredibly generous souls in their own right, but most of the credit for the experience has to go to Nuala.

When we parted, Nuala hugged us and said a completely different farewell to each person. To me she said, “Goodbye my dear, I don’t think any of us will soon forget you.” And though I thought everyone else’s farewell was apt, I thought she hadn’t gotten mine quite right. She must have become confused. She must have read my mind. It was, of course, what I had intended to say to her: Nuala, we won’t soon forget you.

- Lisa