ALMOST THERE (2003)

Loneliness still attacks self-described "Dublin woman" O'Faolain like a recurrent rash, and she still finds the company of dogs more reliable than that of people. But the author of the 1998 memoir Are You Somebody?, now past 60, details her own complicated, under-the-skin condition with such unpitying candor and descriptive power that she mesmerizes even as she keens (she lives half the time in Ireland) and kvetches (she lives the other half in New York City). Follow-up autobiographies are intrinsically less absorbing because the initial novelty of personal detail is gone (The Irish misery! The alcoholic parent!), and, indeed, Almost There stalls in places. Still, O'Faolain seduces with her untamped hunger for love and unjaded delight in her newly adopted American city.