My Dream of You Summary and Reviews

My Dream of You
by Nuala O'Faolain

My Dream of You
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Book Summary Information

Author: Nuala O'Faolain
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-02-05
ISBN: 1573229083
Number of pages: 529
Publisher: Riverhead Trade

Book Reviews of My Dream of You

Book Review: 528 pages of navel-gazing
Summary: 2 Stars

Warning: nothing much happens in this book. It's basically about a 49-year-old woman's mid-life crisis. There's no real plot to speak of -- heroine Kathleen de Burca spends hundreds of pages reflecting on her life and bemoaning her missed chances. Frankly, it was never clear to me why she felt she'd had such a bad life. She had a lifestyle most people would kill for, traveling the world and having all sorts of passionate experiences and affairs. Instead of being grateful for her opportunities, however, she's feeling sorry for herself and thinking herself into a funk. Finally, in the last 50 pages or so, you learn about the thing that led to her lifelong estrangement from her family and from Ireland. In my opinion, this was a cheap literary device by the author to string you along for the length of the book. It's the kind of information that could have been revealed much earlier in the writing, but then the author wouldn't have had much to entice you to keep reading. Then, in the last few pages, Kathleen is enlightened by some trite insights we've heard a million times before: forgive your parents, claim your life, be open to the present moment. Hello, Oprah! Basically, once the author quits dwelling on herself and starts focusing on the outer world and on appreciating other people, she starts feeling better about her life. Duh!

The way the book is structured also is frustrating. There are at least two "stories" in this book -- Kathleen's mid-life crisis and the historical novel Kathleen is writing about a 19th-century divorce case. The author is constantly switching between the two tales, sometimes within the same paragraph. Just when you get caught up in, say, the historical novel about the divorce case, the author starts rambling about some aspect of Kathleen's past or the weather in Ireland. Sad to say, Kathleen's life is not nearly as interesting as the historical novel she's working on, so each time the author yanked me back to Kathleen, I found myself getting increasingly irritated.

On the plus side, some of the the writing is lovely -- I enjoyed some passages immensely and found some of the imagery quite beautiful. It's in the plot -- or lack thereof -- that this book falls down. If you're a self-absorbed middle-aged person, this book might resonate with you. If, however, you accept that aging is inevitable and that it's your responsibility alone to create meaning in your life, you'll quickly grow weary of Kathleen de Burca and her whining.

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