Another Friday, another book

Almost There: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman is a 2003 memoir by Nuala O'Faolain.  Her earlier books are her 1996 memoir, Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman, and My Dream of You, a 2001 novel.  Because it's Friday and time for another Book Beginnings post, I looked over the books on my TBR shelves and chose this one based on the first lines I needed for this post.  (I put back two other books with boring beginnings.  Yes, I'm weird.)

"If I had been asked to report on middle age when I was halfway through my fifties, I would have said that it was too bleak to talk about.  Much too bleak if you believed, as I passionately did, that your life has been a failure."

For some, that bleak beginning -- in a chapter titled "The Low Point" in the second of two memoirs when I haven't read the first one -- would be enough to send them scurrying for another book.  But no, I'm interested and want to continue.
If this is the low point, then things must get better.  I became even more interested in reading about her life when I discovered she and I were both born in 1940.

If you want to play along, this meme is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.  Click this link to see the beginnings of other people's books.