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A Ghost In The Throat

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

4.28 · Rating details · 803 ratings · 112 reviews

A true original. In this stunningly unusual prose debut, Doireann Ni Ghriofa sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. In the present day, a young mother ...more

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Paperback, 326 pages

Published August 27th 2020 by Tramp Press

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Nov 04, 2020 Kai rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned, favorites, feminist-as-fuck

It's hard to explain why I love this book as much as I do. It's unlike anything I've read in my life. And I finished it and smiled, like the fool that I am. So this is just to say: I so love this book. ...more

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Jan 01, 2021 Lotte rated it really liked it

Shelves: ge-memoir, reviewed, a-non-fiction, 2020-release, 2021-read, a-poetry, t-fuck-yeah-feminism, ge-biography

4.25/5. I really liked this, but didn't love it quite as much as I hoped I would unfortunately. The memoir portion of this was EXCELLENT, 10/10, amazing, but I didn't care that much about the research the author does on the poet living in the 1700s. Doireann Ní Ghríofa didn't really manage to convey exactly why she was so obsessed with Eibhlín Dubh (at least I didn't fully get it) and even though I did think the parallels between the two were interesting, I just didn't find that aspect of the bo ...more

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Jul 14, 2020 Eoin Mulligan rated it it was amazing

Once every few years, a book will come along, take me gently by the hand and say “this is where you need to be”. A Ghost in the Throat is exactly that kind of book.

Doireann has achieved something wholly original here. Stitching together a number of genres, AGITT tells the stories of two women; Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill and Doireann Ní Ghríofa herself. Tracing Eibhlín through her murky past, Doireann does so much more than map her life, she embraces it, mystery and all. At the same time Doireann ...more

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Oct 25, 2020 Claire rated it it was amazing

Shelves: irish-literature, nonfiction, around-the-world, essays, autofiction

There once was a woman who fell in love with a poem.

So begins a mini essay written for the Irish Times by the author Doireann Ní Ghríofa describing her almost life-long obsession with the Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, (The Keen for Art O’Leary), an epic Gaelic lament, published in 1773 by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, upon learning of the brutal murder of her much desired husband, whose unborn child she carried.

In A Ghost In My Throat, she puts aside the documents and transcripts and in compelling, o ...more

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Oct 27, 2020 Aoife rated it it was amazing

Shelves: beautiful-covers, pretty-damn-good, literary, non-fiction, brilliant, historical, irish, ravenclaw, irish-author, favorites

This is a female text

I honestly don't think I have the right type of critical, analysing mind to talk about this book properly in the way it deserves but all I can say is, it's a masterpiece.

In this book Doireann Ní Ghríofa outlines her own life and identity as a young mother who becomes enthralled with the mystery of Eibhlín Dubh - the author of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. Who she was before she became the wife and widow of Art, and what became of her after his death. She disappears from his This is a female text

I honestly don't think I have the right type of critical, analysing mind to talk about this book properly in the way it deserves but all I can say is, it's a masterpiece.

In this book Doireann Ní Ghríofa outlines her own life and identity as a young mother who becomes enthralled with the mystery of Eibhlín Dubh - the author of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. Who she was before she became the wife and widow of Art, and what became of her after his death. She disappears from history as the letters she once wrote, or on which her name appeared, were thrown away while similar notes connected to male figures attached to her lived on throughout history.

Love, your blood was spilling in cascades,
and I couldn't wipe it away, couldn't clean it up, no,
no, my palms turned cups and oh, I gulped."

There is so much to love about this story - both Doireann's intense attachment and growing obsession with Eibhlín, and the way she uses her story to tell her own from failed medical student to passionate teacher and onward to loving mother who not only uses her own body to nurture the children of her flesh, but to nurture other babies in need of mother's milk.

"In choosing to carry a pregnancy, a woman gives of her body with a selflessness so ordinary it goes unnoticed, even by herself. Her body becomes bound to altruism as instinctively as to hunger. If she cannot consume sufficient calcium, for example, that mineral will rise up from deep within her bones and donate itself to her infant on her behalf, leaving her own system in deficiency. Sometimes a female body serves another by effecting a theft upon itself."

I thought the structure and flow of this story was perfect. I felt equally attached whether Doireann was talking about her hospital stay, Eibhlín's early life with her twin Mary or the years after when Doireann and her family finally moved to a permanent home and Doireann attempted to pay homage to the woman who came before her and spilled her love into the house and garden (I really loved this chapter about remembering the lady who once lived in their new home, it was so lovely and if everyone could remember others/perfect strangers in the same way, what special moments they would be).

In this book, Doireann paints a picture of Eibhlín Dubh and brings her to life in a glorious way. In writing what she knows down, she finally gives to Eibhlín her own caoineadh that she rightly deserves. Forgotten in history behind the shadows of sons, husbands and brothers, a young mother finally uses her own power of language to pull Eibhlín back into the light and take her rightful place in Ireland's memories.

"In every page there are undrawn women, each waiting in her own particular silence."

This book just really hit me where it was meant to, and I loved every bit of it. I'm excited to reread it again in the future and I feel like every time I do I will feel different emotions and react to different parts even more strongly than I already did the first time around.

...more

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Aug 24, 2020 rosamund rated it it was amazing

Shelves: irish-lit, memoir, essay

In 1773, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonnail composed her famous poem, The Keen For Art Ó Laoghaire. This thirty-six stanza poem, composed in Irish and handed down in the oral tradition, is a lament following the murder of her husband, Art. Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual poet, and A Ghost in the Throat includes both the Irish text of the poem and Ní Ghríofa’s translation. It is an astonishing poem, full of raw emotion, drama and vivid imagery, describing Eibhlín’s infatuation with Art, her marriage to In 1773, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonnail composed her famous poem, The Keen For Art Ó Laoghaire. This thirty-six stanza poem, composed in Irish and handed down in the oral tradition, is a lament following the murder of her husband, Art. Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual poet, and A Ghost in the Throat includes both the Irish text of the poem and Ní Ghríofa’s translation. It is an astonishing poem, full of raw emotion, drama and vivid imagery, describing Eibhlín’s infatuation with Art, her marriage to him, and his murder and Eibhlín’s grief. It grabs the reader’s attention, and allows us to enter Eibhlín’s 18th century world. It’s easy to see how Ní Ghríofa comes to be captivated by this poem, and finds herself unable to disentangle herself from Eibhlín’s story.

This book – part essay, part literary criticism, part historical study – is, in Ní Ghríofa’s words, “a female text”. It is about the removal of women’s lives from history: how the landscape of Eibhlín’s life is erased with a brush of the pen, and we don’t even know where she is buried or when she died. It is only through the lives of men – brothers, father, sons – that we can trace her. Yet Ní Ghríofa is also writing about how the past imprints itself on the present, and how, despite the clumsy erasure of Eibhlín, her voice continues to sing across the centuries, and her story remains part of our own. It is also a book about “women’s work”: the ways in which women give of themselves in order to care for children and family, the endless circles of cleaning, mending and nurturing that are so often overlooked or unvalued. Ní Ghríofa places the concerns of child-rearing, including birth and breast-feeding, at the centre of this text, and by doing so, places them where they deserve to be: in the vital centre of our lives.

Ní Ghríofa is a poet writing about a poet, and this comes across consistently in this book: she interrogates Eibhlín’s use of language and imagery, as well as conjuring the world in memorable and vibrant images. She writes about a stable being “dawn-dark and straw-hush”, of bees creating “the background chorus of those who always hum as they work”, a shower as “scald-water”. The text is full of unique coinages. But this text is consistently grounded: Ní Ghríofa’s prose style is concise and considered. The stories she tells are full of narrative tension – the drama of a dangerous birth kept me up reading long into the night, and the discovery of the sparse facts of Eibhlín’s life filling me with pity and longing to know more. Ní Ghríofa unspools Eibhlín’s story gradually, alongside her own, comparing and contrasting the dramas of modern motherhood with the 18th century lives. She captured my emotions, making Eibhlín’s dramas feel like my own, as well as being utterly engaging as she explores the events of caring for babies, and having a body that gives milk and nourishment.

The erasure of women’s lives is everywhere in this book. Ní Ghríofa writes about being devastated when she comes across a text that she thinks will give her access to Eibhlín’s life but turns out not to mention her at all. As I read, I felt this devastation: that Eibhlín’s existence was not thought worthy of writing down, even by those closest to her. She exists around lacunae, her own words thundering into our ears through her Keen, but the details of her life wiped away. Ní Ghríofa explores these lacunae, not only the historical gaps, but also the things we don’t talk about in our lives: the sound of a breast-pump, the art of hanging laundry, what happens to our bodies after we die. This book offers a perspective from the sidelines – the non-academic who studies history, the 18th century wife, the 21st century mother – and celebrates the tension, beauty and agony of the everyday. When Ní Ghríofa is studying Eibhlín’s life, a district nurse reads her work, and asks, “So what’s all this for, then?” This questions arises again and again in the text – What is this for? Why do we work so hard? How do we create meaning? What does the past matter? Ní Ghríofa’s text doesn’t offer an answer to these questions, but it carefully balances and interrogates them.

This text has lacunae of its own: Ní Ghríofa cannot and doesn’t try to study all aspects of modern womanhood. However, much of her focus is on motherhood and home-making, both in the context of her own life, and in the life of Eibhlín. In the time of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonnail, women had little choice but to become mothers and to devote their lives to domesticity. Now, there are more pathways open, but Ní Ghríofa doesn’t explore why she has chosen child-rearing as one of the central parts of her life, or how she feels about inhabiting the role of mother and home-maker. She celebrates these roles, but doesn’t ask in depth what these roles mean to her or how it feels to take on the domestic sphere in the 21st century. As my life does not and cannot involve motherhood, I would have liked more exploration of this.

That being said, I recommend this book highly. It is worth reading for the quality of Ní Ghríofa’s prose alone, which finds a space where prose becomes poetry and poetry becomes prose. As well as this it is a captivating historical tale, and a unique exploration of the interactions of past and present, and how we hold and respect the lives that come before us. It’s a vital feminist text for Irish society, and a tense and imaginative narrative. ...more

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Sep 29, 2020 Joachim Stoop rated it really liked it

If not for the unmistakable recommendation by a GR/FB- friend and avid reader, I would not have given this a chance, let alone making it jump to the top of my astronomical To Read-pile. The combination of a slightly gotic, slightly historical, a bit esoteric and abundantly poetic mixture doesn't immediately trigger my reading appetite. But I did love the book in the end and am glad I have read it. I admire the huge effort she's put in the language and in making a statement in praise of women and ...more

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Oct 30, 2020 Caoimhe White rated it it was amazing

I am so sad to be parting ways with this book tonight, and would almost read it again immediately just to keep its voice with me.

I had so many moments of stopping and re-reading passages just to try to take in their beauty. It's lyrical, personal, and unique; you feel that Doireann was put on Earth to write this! ...more

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Apr 10, 2020 David Butler rated it really liked it

This is a fascinating read. At its simplest level, it's an account of the narrator's obsession with the 'lost' figure of Eibhlín Dubh ní Chonaill, author of the great eighteenth century lament, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. The book (a novel?) is, insists the author, a 'female text'.
In part it is a kind of conjuration, a (non-academic) attempt to summon up Eibhlín Dubh's ghost so as to re-inscribe her into the history from which she has largely been erased, except in her relationship to male fig ...more

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Nov 01, 2020 Robert rated it it was amazing

2020 is definitely the year I read a lot of novels about motherhood but Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s prose debut takes it to new territories.

The narrator, who I am assuming is the author is in the process of pumping breast milk when she remembers the Ebhlín Ní Choniall’s poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (The Keen for Art Ó Laoghaire) which she had to study at school. This flicker of memory sets the narrator to investigate Ebhlín Ní Choniall’s roots ; her family tree, life, background and relationship w 2020 is definitely the year I read a lot of novels about motherhood but Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s prose debut takes it to new territories.

The narrator, who I am assuming is the author is in the process of pumping breast milk when she remembers the Ebhlín Ní Choniall’s poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (The Keen for Art Ó Laoghaire) which she had to study at school. This flicker of memory sets the narrator to investigate Ebhlín Ní Choniall’s roots ; her family tree, life, background and relationship with the subject of the poem; Art.

The poem itself was written in the late 1700’s when Ebhlín Ní Choniall discovered that her husband was murdered due to be considered an outlaw ( it gets more complicated as there’s a religious implication involved but I’m trying to keep it simple). Upon discovering his body Ní Choniall drinnks his blood and writes the lament.

The narrator herself is not having an easy life. Bouncing between joblessness, children and constantly moving houses she sees that she is suffering, just like the poet and that the narrator’s life is similar. As the book progresses the narrator discovers that masculine attitudes have given Ebhlín Ní Choniall a backseat.

A Ghost in the Throat is about many things : mostly birth and motherhood, The narrator describes her problems giving birth to her third child ; the fears for a child that accompany a troublesome pregnancy. The role breast milk has for a growing baby. Ní Choniall was pregnant when her husband was killed so motherhood took on a different aspect to her as well.

Along with life, the narrator experiences other struggles, her career choices at university, moments of depression and illness. Finally she does achieve peace but it’s through her investigation.

A Ghost in the Throat is a moving book, there are moments of openness which stun the reader. Never have I read such a personal account of life and near death. Yet the novel does not descend into a sob story or is self indulgent. The economic, poetic and addictive writing style helps propel the story.

Like all amazing novels, A Ghost in the Throat, was a punch in the gut and a heart squeezer as well. As a cis-gender male I know I will never experience motherhood or the events Eibhlín Ní Choniall went through but at least, the novel helped me understand the complications and emotions involved. ...more

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Sep 03, 2020 Susan Lanigan rated it it was amazing

"This is a female text"

Not the better after reading that - had to do it slowly. An intersection between biography, autobiography, poetry and historical fiction that defies neat categorisation but lingers in the heart with so many vivid scenes. I was there in the dissection room, the old woman's house, the hospital, Art's burial place. Hook up that tragic love into my veins as well as that deep dive into motherhood.

An absolute masterpiece - well done to Doireann ni Griofa and Tramp Press for brin ...more

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Nov 12, 2020 Dolores rated it it was amazing

"This is a female text."

Only a handful of books ever have caused me to stop mid-chapter, take a breath, and let what's being said fully sink into my heart. This happened constantly throughout this book. Each sentence seems master-crafted, while telling of the heartbreak, the sacrifice, the erasure of womanhood, through the author's painstaking research into an ancient Irish poem. Tentatively calling it my book of the year. ...more

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Dec 28, 2020 Leoniepeonie rated it it was amazing

I savoured every page. It's written and structured so beautifully, exploring and meandering through different directions in a way that felt so heartfelt and instantaneous even while being so clearly (and wonderfully) considered and crafted. It captured so many of the twinges of attachment I've felt when researching people long-dead and threw em all down in glowing prose, basking in the many different and parallel shades of female experience. Yeah baybi. ...more

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Dec 30, 2020 Cinzia DuBois rated it it was ok

I genuinely feel so awful for not liking this book because Doireann is clearly a very lovely and talented writer. I can sense she is such a sweet and genuine person while reading this book with so much talent and determination.

However, I’m afraid I found no drive or purpose to keep reading it as I didn’t connect with the narrative voice. I never felt connected or inspired, and I never knew why I should want to be on this journey, nor was I engaged in it.

It’s such a shame though, because my lac ...more

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Nov 17, 2020 John Braine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the latest zeitgeist Irish book of the moment in Ireland, a phenomenon that happens quite often where everyone seems to be reading the same book at the same time and talking about how amazing it is, on Irish Book Twitter at least. And it is an amazing book.

There are some things that you just can't learn on a writing course. Here's one of them: some people are just incredibly cool and have a fascinating outlook and life, and then manage to get that onto the page. You can learn that latte ...more

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Dec 28, 2020 Gaby rated it really liked it

So beautiful!

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Sep 20, 2020 Bart Van Overmeire rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned-books, reading-women, favorites, read-2020, tramp-press, irish, essays-memoir-non-fiction

I finished the best book of 2020. Soon, too soon.

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Dec 29, 2020 Suzanne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: modern-fiction, book-club, favorites, women-authors

This imaginative book combines essay about the life and work of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, an 18th century Irish poet who composed the keen for Art O’Leary, and autofiction about the author Ní Ghríofa’s life. It explores themes of shared female experiences and the erasure of female lives and voices, both historically and in the modern world. Both Eibhlín Dubh’s poem and Ní Ghríofa’s novel are a caoineadh - a keen, a dirge, a lament. Eibhlín’s for her murdered husband, Ní Gríofa’s for Eibhlín, but This imaginative book combines essay about the life and work of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, an 18th century Irish poet who composed the keen for Art O’Leary, and autofiction about the author Ní Ghríofa’s life. It explores themes of shared female experiences and the erasure of female lives and voices, both historically and in the modern world. Both Eibhlín Dubh’s poem and Ní Ghríofa’s novel are a caoineadh - a keen, a dirge, a lament. Eibhlín’s for her murdered husband, Ní Gríofa’s for Eibhlín, but also for the pieces of her own life she, as a woman, has been sociologically trained to give away in service to others. Historically, lament was one of the few sanctioned modes of female public speech in patriarchal societies in which women were otherwise silenced. It is itself a mode of female labour, but there is a long history of women manipulating lament in order to comment on their lives and voice dissent. So the choice of lament as the mode for this book which explores female lives and attempts to give a voice back to silenced women is particularly apt. Ní Ghríofa documents common female experiences usually obscured from larger society - the difficulties of pregnancy, premature birth, breastfeeding, the reality of researching and writing while caring for children - things not usually considered the stuff of literature. It is in part an ode to the joys, struggles, and sacrifices of motherhood.

In a world where female words aren’t deemed worthy of being written down, the search for what constitutes a female ‘text’ becomes a key focus of the book - the oral tradition of lament, a list of chores, a baby’s blanket knitted by a grandmother, a broken teacup smashed in anger, even the humming of bees - all, in some way, constitute a female text. The idea of physical objects as a conduit for female voices has a long history - in the Iliad Helen weaves her story into the tapestries she creates, and Thetis commissions Achilles’ famous shield; in Metamorphoses Arachne uses her weaving to catalogue the gods’ sexual offenses against mortal women; and Philomela, mutilated by her rapist in an attempt to literally silence her, turns to the ‘voice of the shuttle’ to reveal his crimes to her sister. Weaving and lamentation: such female labour and its resulting products are texts to be read, objects in which we might glimpse a moment of a woman’s life. Ní Ghríofa focuses particularly on the way such texts are embodied: Eibhlín Dubh composes her husband’s dirge while drinking handfuls of his blood; Ní Ghríofa translates Eibhlín’s text while breastfeeding. Their stories are composed in blood and milk rather than ink. Ní Ghríofa’s body will become a text itself in the end, for she donates it to the medical department of her old university, for future students to dissect and ‘read’.

The natural world is everywhere in this book, and it is filled with the humming of female ghosts, both past and present, both human and animal. Art O’Leary’s unnamed mare is as much a character as any of the humans, her role in the story no less important than theirs. The association of women with the natural world, rather than the socio-political one, is once again ancient in its origins, and traditionally posed a threat to patriarchal society: in the Odyssey the witch Circe lives alone on her enchanted island, taming beasts and turning men into animals; Aeschylus’ Oresteia dramatizes the struggle between the ancient, chthonic female Furies, the representatives of blood ties & the rights of women, and the young male Olympian Apollo, the champion of social ties & the rights of men. The association of women with nature and blood is a source of power and danger.

Ní Ghríofa’s language is beautiful, lyrical, and evocative. Her translation of the Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoighaire is included in the back of the book. I would argue that this translation merits publication in its own right, especially considering the vast amounts of research Ní Ghríofa has clearly done on it. I happened to be reading Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey at the same time as a Ghost in the Throat - another translator who aims to draw out the voices of women and correct the biases of male academics.

As well as an ode to motherhood, A Ghost in the Throat is also an ode to the research process. As someone writing a PhD thesis on women in antiquity, I related strongly to Ní Ghríofa’s frustration with the struggle of trying to uncover women’s voices when they have been erased from the historical and literary record - not even erased, for they were never included to start with. How do we access these silenced and marginalized narratives? Ní Ghríofa begins by committing ‘an act of willful erasure, whittling each document and letter until only the lives of women remain’. This ‘oblique reading’ will lure ‘female lives back from male texts’, revealing ‘the concealed lives of women, present, always, but coded in invisible ink’. It’s a good start. But eventually every trace of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill disappears entirely from the written record. When historical documents can take her no further, Ní Ghríofa turns towards a kind of imaginative scholarship in order to fill in the blanks - she draws on her own experiences as a mother, writer, and wife in order to imagine those of Eibhlín Dubh - also a mother, writer (or perhaps ‘composer’ is a more accurate term), and wife. There are certain female experiences which seem to have remained unchanged by the passing of the centuries, and it is in these collective experiences that Ní Ghríofa feels her strongest connection to Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. The resulting book is a remarkable female text. ...more

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Nov 20, 2020 Niall O'neill rated it it was amazing

This is a unique and wonderful book, which defies easy categorisation. It’s an autobiographical account of the writer’s obsession with Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill, an 18th century Irish poet, and her work Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire. We see the world through the writer’s mind, as a mother, living a typically 21st century urban life (“first I feed our sons, then fill the dishwasher”), to her imagined senses from Eibhlin’s life: “I let the gravel become a kitchen floor and make the room around me bus ...more

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Oct 25, 2020 Emma Flanagan rated it it was amazing

An impossible book to describe or explain to anyone. An exploration of a female text through beautiful prose which reflects the writers poetic skill.

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Nov 01, 2020 Emily O’Dowd rated it it was amazing

The best book I have read all year. Now that I've devoured it in whatever spare time I had, I'm going to have to go back and pull out all the incredibly beautiful quotes.

Read it. ...more

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Dec 15, 2020 Saoire rated it liked it

I love the premise of the book; the idea of weaving her own life experiences with those of a poet whom she admires with the aim of uncovering the truths and realities of women which have been concealed in history really appealed, but the delivery didn't quite work (for me anyways). For a book that seems to be about connection, it felt quite disjointed and the links between her own life and Eibhlín Dubhs were not quite solid enough for the book to read seamlessly. For that reason, I felt it was p ...more

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Sep 30, 2020 Erin Darcy rated it it was amazing

An absolutely stunning piece. I cannot turn a page without stopping to read and re-read a line or paragraph, willing it to sink into my bones. The rhythm and ways Doireann weaves her life, poetry, history, women all together - all of the intrinsic ways of being and living, with birth and blood and love and death. Ugh, my heart. This is not just a female text, this is a sacred text. This is holy. This book is visceral, ancestral, alchemy. Something I have never ever experienced with reading a boo ...more

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Sep 19, 2020 Mike rated it it was amazing

Doireann Ní Ghríofa's A Ghost in the Throat is an almost impossible one to categorize, and was as equally almost impossible to put down. In part a memoir of her life as an Irish woman, literary artist, and a mother, A Ghost in the Throat is also the story of Ní Ghríofa's search to research and translate a poem that she first encountered in school, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, which was written by a noblewoman named Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill in 1700’s rural Ireland. This is also a book about femal ...more

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Dec 27, 2020 Jamie Pacton rated it it was amazing

“This is a female text…”

And so starts A GHOST IN THE THROAT, the most surprising, beautiful, breathtaking, visceral, feminist, badass book I’ve read this year. What a ride this book was. It’s about female bodies; female texts (written, sung, lived, burned, bled); invisible labor; motherhood; loss; fear; the ways women have been erased in male stories/histories/rooms/spaces; and, one woman’s deep dive into another long-dead poetess’ life. It’s also about breastfeeding/caregiving and the very lite ...more

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Dec 15, 2020 Michelle rated it it was amazing

I am hesitant to give this 5 stars as it wouldn't necessarily be a book I will tell everyone they have to read, like my usual 5 star rated reads. But I couldn't give it any less as it is so beautifully written and so different to anything I've read before.

The author somehow manages to tell the true story of an old poem, her obsession with both the poem and the characters real lives, whilst describing her day to day life as a woman and mother. It's just a very unusual way of story telling, yet n ...more

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Jan 09, 2021 Aine Palmer rated it it was amazing

this beautiful little book managed to exceed my already high expectations ! despite all of the (well-deserved) hype, i possibly approached it a little skeptically, thinking myself tired of autofiction. but though this book certainly bears resemblance to many others (maggie nelson, sinead gleeson, emilie pine, &c &c) it doesn't feel like bland repetition at any point. it is probably a testament to the books capaciousness that i felt it resonated so strongly with me. ní ghríofa writes so poeticall ...more

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Nov 19, 2020 Aoife McMenamin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I’m not even sure how to describe this book but it’s beautifully written, and so evocative of new motherhood and those early days that go by in a blur with young children. I couldn’t identify a genre myself, it’s so unusual, but I’ve seen it described as a mix of auto-fiction and non-fiction. It’s the author’s own story of her obsession with a poem written by an 18th century Irish woman named Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill, by the name of Caoineadh Art Uí Laoghaire (Lament for Art O’Leary), combined ...more

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Jan 05, 2021 Derval Tannam added it

3.5 stars. I found the essay style sections of this book offputting at times, but overall it was very readable. The focus on motherhood, and breastfeeding in particular, and how the author felt it gave them meaning/worth alienated me slightly, but I thoroughly enjoyed the sections on her research and the facts and speculation about Eibhlin's life. The author continually reminds us that women are removed from texts and thus from history to a certain extent. I'll probably read it again at some poi ...more

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Sep 26, 2020 Mairead Mulcahy rated it really liked it

Shelves: 20-for-2020

This book is lovely and reads like poetry, which should come as no surprise as the author is actually a poet anyway.
Be warned, however, that in reading it, a little bit of a 'wandering through the Celtic Twilight of the mind' is needed. I enjoyed the descriptive passages; they were pretty visceral and sensual in places.
Altogether this is a Recommend but with the proviso that you're not going to be reading a straight narrative. ...more

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European Literature > Irish Literature

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Poetry

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Feminism

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About Doireann Ní Ghríofa

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