‘Trespassers: A Memoir’, by Julia O¹Faolain

In this memoir Julia O’Faolain, author of seven distinguished novels and many short stories, asserts that she has nothing to say about the ‘inner Julia’, because being a writer she is more interested in observing other people. And, importantly, ‘I write because Seán and Eileen did.’

Some women stop identifying themselves as their parents’ daughter when they leave home. Julia O’Faolain certainly left home geographically. Over a long life she has lived in London, Dublin, Rome, Florence, Paris, Los Angeles, Portland, New York and Venice. Yet on the evidence of this succinct memoir, she remains the daughter. There is as much about her father in this book as there is about herself, as she mulls over his career, his character, his political opinions, and the things he said to her. She ponders too on his extramarital affairs, notably with the writers Elizabeth Bowen and Honor Tracy. I have it at first hand that over lunch at the Kildare Street Club in Dublin he compared making love to one of these two great women to making love to a double-decker bus.