Best Love, Rosie. Nuala O'Faolain

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      PRAISE FOR

       Are You Somebody?

      “You don’t want the book to end; it glows with compassion

      and you want more, more because you know this is a fine

      wine of a life, richer as it ages.”

       —Frank McCourt

      “This book has to be read. One of the most perfectly observed portraits

      of female loneliness I’ve ever come across.…O’Faolain brings a spiky,

      independent intelligence that vanquishes cliche.”

      —Zoe Heller, The New York Times Book Review

      “A beautiful exploration of human loneliness and happiness, of

      contentment and longing.”

      —Alice McDermott, Washington Post Book World

      “A lovely memoir that traces the growth of a woman

      and her country over the last 50 years.”

       —Publishers Weekly

      “ ‘I’m not anybody in terms of the world, but then, who decides

      what a somebody is? How is a somebody made?’ asks Irish Times columnist O’Faolain. The answer can be found in her moving and painfully honest memoir, a best seller in her native Ireland that deserves as much attention here.”

       —Library Journal

      “A funny, plainspoken, heartfelt memoir.”

       —Elle Magazine

      “A lovely and complex mosaic out of the moments that

      make up a life as it is being lived.”

       —USA Today

      IRISH PRAISE FOR

       Best Love, Rosie

      “This is a rich, frank and heartening novel. It is an excursion and an

      education; a long, luxurious wander through a library of bold, beautiful

      and inimitable things. It is vintage Nuala, one last time.”

      —Belinda Mckeon, The Sunday Irish Times

      “Everyone feels like they knew Nuala. And it is impossible to separate

      Nuala from the novel—the similarities with both Rosie and Min

      are most definitely there—which makes reading it a very strange

      experience. The way she brought the D-word into our national

      conversation—how she laid bare her life and death in an attempt to

      better understand society and the way the world worked—was not

      always easy to take. However, her novels are, and it is rather comforting

      to have one last bittersweet journey with Nuala.”

       —Independent.ie

      “…Rosie generally wears her learning, and her philosophy, and her

      spirituality, lightly. The novel succeeds in blending the deep and the

      shallow, the wise and the mildly absurd, in a series of seamless transitions

      from kitchen to library, frocks to philosophy, body to mind.…But the

      mixture of the light and the serious is undoubtedly also brought about

      by the author’s own attitude to life. O’Faolain was brilliant, educated,

      deeply thoughtful, but she was down to earth and despised pretension.

      So does her book. That is its great charm, and that is why it resists

      categorisation. There will be no ready made niche for it in the bookshop.

      It is just Nuala.”

      —ÉIlís Ní Dhuibhne, The Irish Times

      “The powerful, overriding message in this time-challenging tale

      of Min and Rosie is actually a simple one: we are only ever trapped

      in our own heads, not our bodies—no matter how old they are.

      And so we must grab our chances while we have them, live in the

      now and put our best heart forward. Always.

      Who else to sum it all up then, than Nuala O’Faolain herself—in the

      optimistic words with which she concludes the introduction to her

      last ever book: ‘Even the most seemingly moribund life is open to the

      possibility of change—in youth, in middle age, and always.’”

      —Sile McArdle ©Independent.ie

       Best Love, Rosie

      NUALA O’FAOLAIN (1940–2008) was one of Ireland’s best-loved journalists and writers. She came to international attention for her two volumes of memoir, Are You Somebody? (1996) and Almost There (2003). She also wrote the novel, My Dream of You (2001), and a history with commentary, The Story of Chicago May (2005). Her first three books were all featured on the New York Times Bestseller list.

       nuala o’faolain

       Best Love, Rosie

      First published by GemmaMedia in 2010.

      GemmaMedia 230 Commercial Street Boston MA 02109 USA 617 938 9833 www.gemmamedia.com

      Copyright ©Nuala O’Faolain estate, 2008 and 2010

      This edition of Best Love, Rosie is published by arrangement with Sabine Wespieser, Éditeur.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

      reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written

      permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief

      quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

      Printed in the United States of America

      12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5

      ISBN: 978-1-934848-41-8

       Cover design by Night and Day Design

      Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number (PCN) applied for.

       Acknowledgments

      I would like to thank Dr. Lara Honos-Webb for advice on depression quoted; Indiana University Press for permission to quote from On Aging, Revolt and Resignation by Jean Améry, translated by John D. Barlow, 1994; and Alfred Publishing for permission to quote from Cole Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine’.

       Introduction

      I live in a cottage a few fields above the Atlantic ocean, in the west of Ireland. But for some years now, since my first book, Are You Somebody? had a big success in the United States, I’ve divided my time between Ireland and a room in Manhattan. I wanted to borrow the immigrant energy of the great city. I wanted to escape the despair and lethargy that still