Nuala O'Faolain makes a public apology to the wives of her lovers
Sunday March 19 2006
WRITER Nuala O'Faolain has apologised to women she hurt as a result of affairs she had with married men.
And she admits that she is still haunted by her mother whom she exposed as an alcoholic in her memoir, Are You Somebody?
The feminist, who now lives in New York with her partner and his daughter, says she can see her mother in herself all the time.
"I see her emerging in my face. I see her emerging in my hands. She is with me all the time. I am sorry for the life she had," she says.
In a moving documentary about her life since the best-selling autobiography which described her horrific childhood of poverty and abuse, O'Faolain breaks down when she recalls seeing her mother lying drunk on the floor.
She says she still finds it painful to talk of the day she called to bring her mother out, but instead found her comatose in her sitting room.
"You know, it is simple. I took so much courage to go to see her anyway. I never knew what state she would be in. I had an idea that I would take her out but there she was - a lump on the floor."
In the documentary, Flesh And Blood, O'Faolain says her memoir was an accident and originally planned as a collection of her journalism. She says it wasn't until she set pen to paper for the introduction to the collection that the notion of writing her life story took hold. Her shocking honesty made the book one of the most celebrated memoirs of modern times and exposed the private truths behind her parents' destructive marriage and her mother's alcoholism.
In the documentary, she describes a bleak picture of her early adulthood of drinking, affairs, and a growing isolation in her middle years. And she apologises to women she has hurt by a string of affairs she had with married men.
"I'm very sorry for other women I have hurt and particularly because half-way through my life, feminism happened. You do want to behave better as a feminist. I'm very sorry for the women I've hurt. But I do resent being asked about this, as if the men had no choice. They were the married ones - not me."
O'Faolain describes how she has tried to come to terms with her "lifetime of fury" and the fall-out from her memoir. She says just one relationship in her life was positive - her lesbian affair with another woman.
"One relationship was life-giving. I don't know what is so extraordinary that that was with another woman."
Nuala O'Faolain had a 15-year affair with journalist Nell McCafferty.
Flesh and Blood will reveal exclusive personal footage of Nuala's new family life. She says that although living with "a decent man and his child", she battles to accept the mundanity of domesticity and the simple pleasures of sharing and giving.
She will also speak for the first time of the shocking death of her younger brother, Dermot. "There is a duty on parents to give love," she says. "Every one of the nine of us has been so vulnerable. What would we have been if we were loved?"
Flesh & Blood will be screened on RTE1 this Thursday, March 23, at 10.15pm.
