After my last lukewarm post about this book, I thought I’d add two more words because I was unfair with this book. At the very beginning, the main character Kathleen De Burca annoyed me no end. She was bitter, unresolved, whiny. She seemed to put herself in all the wrong situations, to sleep around with all the wrong men. I was very close to stopping reading altogether. Then my view of her changed as she started to reflect as to why she’d wasted so many opportunities, so many relationships, why she kept sabotaging her life.

I think I got to this stage in my life where traditional coming-of-age stories turn boring, when young people barely out of their teens grapple with tough decisions about the love of their life or the career of their life before eventually finding a satisfying conclusion in which they live happily ever after. It’s rarely ever that simple, so I’m turning with more and more interest towards fictions in which middle-aged characters look back on all their youthful mistakes and painfully try to change and make good decisions. When it comes later in life, it’s all the more challenging (and interesting): it’s so much more easier to keep doing things just like before, even if nothing good ever came out of it.

Kathleen is such a character, not easy to love at first sight, but courageous and honest and surely someone I’d respect if I met her in real life. Sometimes I felt O’Faolain was getting close to Nancy Huston’s world. It’s more an impression than a fact, but I find in both their writing a feminine approach that tackles feminist issues with honesty and daring. It’s not that easy to write about the single, middle-aged woman’s sex life and her fear to grow old alone, unloved. This book really deserves a second chance.