In her memoir Nuala O’Faolain attempts to answer this question. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, looking back she writes “the most useful thing I brought out of my childhood was confidence in reading.”
Growing up in County Dublin, one of nine children, her father was a charming, well-known Irish journalist; her mother a beaten-down alcoholic. It was a time and place that didn’t educate girls, but she prevailed and earned a Ph.D. in medieval literature at the University of Hull, became a university lecturer with a successful career in television, radio and print journalism. She tells us how this confidence in reading sustained her throughout her professional and romantic life. For me it wasn’t just reading. It was the books.