Nuala O'Faolain, Irish journalist acclaimed for memoir, novels

NUALA O'FAOLAIN (Perry Ogden)

Nuala O'Faolain, whose heart-wrenching account of her search for love transformed her from a relatively obscure newspaper columnist to an international best-selling author, died of cancer Friday night in Blackrock Hospice, just south of her native Dublin. She was 68.

With the 1996 publication of "Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman," Ms. O'Faolain achieved fame and fortune. But to the end she remained something of a sad, luckless soul, cheated by fate as she had been by love. Two months ago, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She went on national radio in Ireland last month and, choking back tears, explained that she would not undergo chemotherapy.

"I don't want more time," she said, appearing on the Radio Telefis Eireann program hosted by her friend Marian Finucane. "As soon as I heard I was going to die, the goodness went from life."

The Irish were riveted by Ms. O'Faolain's mournful explanation of how she decided not to treat her cancer. Like her memoir - which named names, angering some who complained their privacy had been invaded - Ms. O'Faolain's radio interview divided the nation. Some said she was brave, others, including cancer survivors, said she was wrong to send such a defeatist message.

But in the end Ms. O'Faolain died as she lived: on her own terms, candid about her fears, insecurities, and sense of accomplishment tinged with failure. She counted men and women among her lovers, and it was the honesty in writing about it that infused her memoir, and that resonated with many readers around the world.

Nuala O'Faolain - pronounced "Noola Oh-FWAY-lon" - was the second eldest of nine children born and raised in Dublin. Her father, Tomas, was a journalist who wrote a popular man-about-town column for the Evening Press under the pen name Terry O'Sullivan.

In her memoir, Ms. O'Faolain described a distant, detached father who was too busy with his own social-climbing career to spend much time with his family. Her father, she wrote, was someone who "treated the family as if he had met them at a cocktail party." Her mother, from whom Ms. O'Faolain inherited her love of literature, became an alcoholic.

Ms. O'Faolain said she, too, looked for companionship too often at the bottom of a bottle. One of her greatest regrets, she said, was having spent so many years drinking heavily. She said the drinking culture of Ireland was something she grew to detest. Two of her brothers drank themselves to death.

At 14, Ms. O'Faolain was expelled from high school for sneaking into dances so she could meet boys, and she later attended an Irish-speaking boarding school in Northern Ireland run by nuns.

After graduating from University College Dublin, and getting a master's degree in English at Oxford University, Ms. O'Faolain taught English briefly. But she drifted into journalism, first with the BBC and then RTE, the national broadcaster in Ireland. Ms. O'Faolain was a feminist, and much of her broadcast journalism in the 1970s and 1980s examined the place and plight of women in the patriarchal society that was Ireland.

It was around that time that Ms. O'Faolain began a romantic relationship with Nell McCafferty, a well-known journalist and civil rights activist from Derry. McCafferty was as extroverted as Ms. O'Faolain was retiring, as confident as Ms. O'Faolain was insecure. They were a couple for 13 years. Their relationship, which ended in recrimination, formed the backbone of Ms. O'Faolain's memoir. Friends said the pair reconciled before Ms. O'Faolain died.

In 1986, Ms. O'Faolain began writing a column for The Irish Times, and she soon built up a devoted readership. But she remained relatively unknown outside Ireland until she published "Are You Somebody?" The success of that book led her to write her first novel, "My Dream of You," whose narrator, a childless, lonely middle-aged travel writer, was a thinly veiled depiction of Ms. O'Faolain. The novel was successful, as was "Almost There," a sequel to her memoir, and "The Story of Chicago May," a book about an Irish mobster.

Having tried and failed in love with so many people, Ms. O'Faolain later fell in love with New York, where she kept an apartment, in addition to her home in the rural west of Ireland. She also fell in love with John Low-Beer, a Brooklyn man who was her partner for the last years of her life.

It was both tragic and ironic that Ms. O'Faolain received the news of her cancer in New York, which she had come to worship for what she said was its belief in second chances. She said the doctor who broke the news was cold. The heartless way in which her condition was relayed to her seemed to capture the sadness that stalked Ms. O'Faolain, despite her celebrity.

Ms. O'Faolain leaves a brother, Terry of Dublin; and five sisters, Grainne O'Broin and Deirdre Brady of Dublin, Marian of Westport, County Mayo, Ireland, Noreen of London, and Niamh of Tarbert, County Kerry, Ireland.

A funeral will be held tomorrow in Glasnevin Crematorium, Dublin.

Kevin Cullen can be reached at cullen@globe.com.