Ireland Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman Nuala O'Faolain One of nine children, Nuala O'Faolain grew up in the 1940s and '50s in down-and-out Dublin, daughter of a ne'er-do-well father (think Angela's Ashes) and an alcoholic mother. While O'Faolain's siblings flounder in this atmosphere of disinterest and desertion, she finds refuge in books. Later, through her work as a columnist at the Irish Times, O'Faolain takes on a male-dominated literary world where writing and drink matter far more than women. "In the 'literary Dublin'.... women either had to make no demands, and be liked, or be much larger than life, and feared." Clearly O'Faolain makes the old boys tremble. Her provocative take on the sexual and professional situation of Irish women can shock at times. She sees childbearing as an obstruction to happiness and deems bad education and financial dependence enemies of female ambition. While acknowledging that not everyone has her moxie, she reveals how she was able to upend the assumptions and realities of Irish women's lives. Like children, middle-aged women "aren't supposed to kick up." It's unlikely that O'Faolain will ever stop.