The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country – A Poignant Northern Ireland Memoir and Social History of Grief and Healing

by Rosie Schaap

Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist, and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful places—and getting paid to write about it. But beneath the surface she was reeling from the loss of her husband and her mother, who had died just one year apart. Caring for them had claimed much of her daily life in her late thirties. Mourning them would take longer.

It wasn’t until a reporting trip took her to the Northern Irish countryside that Schaap found a partner to heal with: Glenarm, a quiet, seaside village in County Antrim. That first visit made such an impression that she returned to make a life. This unlikely place—in a small, tough country mainly associated with sectarian strife—gave her a measure of peace that had seemed impossible elsewhere.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Ireland, Travel, Audiobook, Grief, Irish Literature

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2024

Reviews

[Moonkiszt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before we're through here most of us will have had people we love pass on before us and will have, depending on the closeness of the person passing on, the experience of grieving. The closer that person / being / creature is to us, and the why of the moment that takes them, will combine to intensify the grief and the length of its lasting and staying power.

Author Rosie Schaap had just such an experience with her first husband - it was a shock and unexpected and she needed time out. Her choice of place for that time out was the beautiful island now known as Ireland, and specifically the northern coastline possessed of a place she came to know for the comfort it afforded her: Glenarm. She returns a number of times to Ireland, to finally decide on staying for good, that she's a better person there than anywhere else.

The gentle, foundational adventures that fill this book are encouraging, and filled with inspiration enough to nudge one back onto their journey without having to abandon or forget the past. Rather, readers are urged to remember the love shared in the past by those who have traveled out of sight. For the time being.

*A sincere thank you to Rosie Schaap, Mariner Books, Dreamscape Media, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.* #TheSlowRoadNorth #NetGalley 24/52:14

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read recently by a Rosie with an Ireland connection, which feels like a nice coincidence. Very different stories, but with some other odd coincidences: In A Rosie Life in Italy, the author describes leaving Ireland for Italy in part to escape grief...while in The Slow Road North, the author describes leaving New York for Northern Ireland, in part to escape grief.

He was not one of those people who say they are ready for death. Can those people be serious? There were still too many books Frank wanted to read. (loc. 99*)

I say 'escape grief', but that's not right: Schaap moved to a village in Northern Ireland after her husband got ill and died, far too young, and after her mother too died, but she did not move to escape grief—she needed to be able to fully process her grief in a way that she was unable to do in New York, with its fast pace and all its ghosts. New York was home. But sometimes home is not enough. In Glenarm, she sought a new kind of life: a degree in writing, a new community, people who did not shy away from grief or pain but accepted them as part of life. And she learned a great deal: about the Troubles, and the rifts that remained in Glenarm, even if they were quieter than before; it's fascinating to read about her experience being Jewish in a place that was for so long split between Protestant and Catholic, with little thought given to people who might fall outside those categories.

Schaap talks a little about the choice of the title for the book, but it feels right: it's a fairly understated book, with measured peaks and lows rather than crashing ones, despite the grief and loss that underpin the story. Character-driven, if you will; it's well into the book before Schaap gets into her relationship with her mother and who her mother was as a person, and it's a wise choice, because Schaap's mother was clearly nothing if not a complicated person, but that's allowed to come second to love.

When Frank died and my mother was too unwell to come to the funeral, I asked her to promise me that she wouldn't die that year, too. She made me that promise and she kept it. She died one year and thirteen days after Frank. (2414)

(That line low-key devastated me; there was a while when it looked like I'd lose both my parents within a year—I did not; my mother is back to her extremely energetic self—and while it's absolutely a different scenario, I get how terrifying the prospect of losing two loved ones so close together is. I've already moved away from my parents, but I can well imagine picking up my whole life and restarting after so devastating a loss.)

This is one for readers who are in it for character and rumination and the slow road north through grief. It's a lovely take.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of, The Slow Road North, by Rosie Schaap. from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Rosie Schaap is a journalist, battling through grief who came to Glenarm, in County Antrim. Ireland, to write a story, and fell in love with the location. Rosie decides to move from New York to Glenarm permanently. I enjoyed this book, I love most books about Ireland, and this is a good one.

[Carol Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Authors that can weave anecdotes about history, into works that aren't sold as historical, are powerful. Another reviewer for The Slow Road North complained that Rosie Schapp wandered off-topic, but I disagree. I think Schapp explores different facets of grief, historical and personal, from saying goodbye to a home to the ghosts that haunt civilization. Schapp has a well-rounded view of grief, and that's going to annoy the heck out of the fuddy-duddies. Read this novel while visiting historic sites and old friends, for sensory bliss.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

***Advanced Complimentary Promotional Copy


This is a memoir of recovering from grief. While I sympathized with the author I found it hard to focus on the story. The tale meanders from Brooklyn, New York to Northern Ireland. The book feels a bit unfocused, almost as if it’s a journal that was rewritten in book form.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both topics of this book were very interesting to me, her moving to Ireland and the grief she was dealing with. I received this book for free through a Goodreads Giveaway.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rosie Schaap chronicles her dual grief of her husband's death and a little over a year later her mother's death . She was a caregiver for both loved ones. Leaving NYC behind she finds a quiet tiny town in the North of Ireland, a place she decides that she can make a life there carrying her grief to a new culture, to new friends , different work. She gives us histories of different aspects of Irish culture and we learn of the deep losses suffered through the struggles of Catholics and Protestants.

Here in Glenarm, population ? 500 she digs in to make a new life refreshed by her proximity to the sea and forest. It's a sweet book on loss, hope and taking a chance on a road not traveled.

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading Rosie Schapp's new memoir - thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. This book had all the feels : grief, happiness, exploration, new beginnings, real life turning out to be not quite as you thought it would be. I found the book sincere and loved the setting of Northern Ireland. If you like memoirs check it out.

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice meditation of grief, healing, and the magic of Ireland.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a soft spot for Ireland and Northern Ireland, so when I had the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this memoir, I didn't hesitate. And, it didn't disappoint. This is a story of grief and how we all handle it differently, but also how the Irish, and particularly those in the North, have an intimate (dare I say, also healthier?) connection and experience with it.

The author must deal with many losses in a relatively short period of time and finds a partial antidote in the small town of Glenarm, on the Antrim Coast, north of Belfast. She writes with honesty and a good deal of humor about her life in NYC, as well as her initial visit and subsequent move to Glenarm, a place she clearly loves. The strong sense of place (forest and ocean 10 minutes apart? sign me up!) and the visceral anecdotes about the people she comes to know and love along the way (including her pandemic experiences), create an unmistakably personal, but also universally understood exploration of community, grief and the human condition.

Please note: I received a digital ARC from Netgalley & Mariner Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are strictly my own.

[Leora Fitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one. I loved how she connected with others and discussed their different ways of grieving. The Ireland setting and history tidbits were great, too. My only complaint would be that I wish it flowed better to be more cohesive.

[Shadib Bin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Slow Road North by Rosie Schaap

This was an unfortunately terrible read. I was hopeful - seeing some initial glowing reviews, regarding how the author navigates her grief through spending time in Ireland.

There are glimmers of good writing but overall, Rosie’s fragmented writing isn’t very convincing and feels hollow through and through. It’s definitely difficult to critique someone who is writing about grief, but the self-pity approach she takes on to put her late husband on the pedestal (and wiping away her own agency as a result) especially with regards to likes and dislikes about things such as music, art, etc., just didn’t feel very enjoyable to read and rather made me detach early on from the book.

Her jumping around different cities when she can’t navigate something in her real life in Brooklyn, and try and find paid travel trips to write about - frankly boring subjects, feels quite pedestrian and again, very little to engage with. I could just anticipate when she’d drop the explanations on how she is trying to spin a conversation / a new curiosity into perhaps something that can be a podcast, a write-up, which I understand is the job of a journalist but for a memoir that’s supposed to delve deeper into things - just feels highly commercializing every interactions and leaving no breathing space.

Perhaps my biggest critique is that - by nature of just jumping around and moving around, it’s permeating in the writing - and starts to make the book about grief and moving through it, very akin to self-help books without soul. It has all the ingredients - an inflection point, a beautiful new place, leaving old home, new acquaintances and what not - but if you can’t stay put with some threads of thought for a prolonged period of time - you end up with writings such as this - haphazard and “love, live, life” energy. It just annoyingly felt empty.

Disappointed to say the least.

[Megan]

DNFed at 74%. I really tried to stick with this one because I usually enjoy memoirs and reading about other people's travels, and I wanted to hold space for this author's perspectives on grief. But I just kept losing interest. Not a bad book, just not for me.

I received an audio ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. No star rating since I didn't finish.

[Nicole Melleby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm biased because I know and love Rosie. But also I'm not biased because this book is great.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've only been to Dublin, but I loved Ireland and want to go back and visit at least the West Coast. I wanted to read this book as a description of rural Ireland and also because living in Ireland helped Rosie Schaap recover from her grief at her husband's untimely death and her mother's death. I was sorely disappointed, however, in the author's lack of emotional honesty. She portrays her relationship with her husband as deep and loving, but then, mid-paragraph, she drops in a sentence that says that when he got cancer, they were separated. Then they unseparated and she took care of him. But wait! Why were they separated? What happened to their idyllic relationship? There could be lots of reasons why she left him, but then decided to come back, but Schaap doesn't tell us what they are, which makes me think that her grief might not have come from losing the love of her life, but rather from guilt at having left him. She makes a nod toward this, but it's never explored. She seems to have a much better relationship with Mark, whom she meets in Ireland. I also found her portrayal of how she was welcomed into the rural Irish community unconvincing. I thought the novel by Tana French, "The Searcher," which portrays the community as quite skeptical of this American who's moved in, was a lot more plausible. So, in sum, I found this romanticized memoir to be absorbing in places, but ultimately disappointing.

[Lux Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful, funny, honest, transporting balm for people who are grieving. Or breathing. Please read it.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you for the ARC. I really enjoyed reading about Northern Ireland, and how the author moved forward after losing so many loved ones. Sometimes it was hard to keep track of the order of events, as she jumped back and forth. One really resonated with me was realizing that while she thought of her mother often, she didn't really miss her and felt lighter without her, which is the same feeling I've had since my mother died.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is easily one of the best books I've read about grief in the aftermath of my mom's death. Tender, thoughtful, brave and lovely.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rosie Schaap was once a guest lecturer at out college, around the time of Covid. We loved her manner, her honest approach to writing and how easily she shared her life story.
A 'widow woman' who had carved a new life in a new country? We were amazed she wasn't in a bawling heap still. When she told us about her forthcoming book, we made a note to read this as then anonymous title, and finally nearly three years later, I am glad I have.
As the title says, it's about finding peace. This New Yorker is not loud or flashy; the softness of voice, warm and forgiving, simply shares a life narrative with a healthy dose of humour. Schaap invites the reader along on her journey, overcoming grief and guilt with the support of friends, food and forests. Ireland suits her, becoming a kind of green and humorous therapist if you will. Along the way, we read anecdotes, historical events and cultural oddities that combine to make Ireland the place Schapp now considers home.

[Eleni Retzepis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, didn’t leave me a changed person, but solid book

[Rachael Hodson (still skiing) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Rosie Schaap’s travel memoir of overcoming grief and finding a new life, new love and a new pup in Ireland. This is a sweet story and while it was enjoyable, it is rather journalistic in style and sometimes hard to really sink into. I was sucked in by the pretty but vintage cover. All my best to this wonderful woman and her new life. 🤍

[T.O. Munro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book to read, not just for the quality of writing and imagery, but for the way the author’s premise, experiences, and even location, resonated for me personally.

Like Rosie Schapp my wife and I have enjoyed several visits to the quiet beauty spot that is Glenarm.

Like her, I am not a native of Norn Ireland, having come to live here later in life.

Like her, I missed the moment of a loved one’s passing.

Like her, I was on the QUB MA creative writing course in the year that Covid hit.
(Indeed, I recognized aspects of some chapters in pieces that Rosie shared in workshop sessions with fellow students on the course.)

So, when I found a signed copy of the book in The Secret Bookshelf in Carrickfergus, it was an easy purchasing decision.

Schapp displays her skills as journalist and interviewer in the portraits of the people of her adopted home village, capturing descriptions and life stories with deft prose. I found it fascinating to hear through them how Glenarm was once a much more thriving near metropolis, almost self-sufficient with multiple butchers, grocers and even a cinema. There is a strange cognitive dissonance in the current populist mantras that hark back t those ‘halcyon days of the past’ while denigrating initiatives like ‘the fifteen minute city’ as some kind of ‘socialist’ drive to ghetto-isation. The Glenarm of the past that Schapp describes is the epitome of the 15 minute city – where every essential is within a fifteen minute walk or cycle ride.

Ash and I have taken several drives up the coast road from Larne up the Antrim Glens and through the Black Arch to enjoy the castle and the tearooms at Glenarm, though it was interesting to hear Schapp’s reasoned disagreements with the commercial angle of the pizza bar (which I saw at various stages of its construction) and the icecream parlour (where I enjoyed a not-found-since whisky flavoured icecream). These developments, with their limited opening hours are targeted at the transient daily tourist rather than the needy locals who must resort to more than 15 minutes away Carnlough for their takeaway needs.

Shapp wonders at the reason for the decline in the Village’s amenities and whether the Troubles had something to do with it. To my mind the answer is simply the motor car obsession of the second half of the twentieth century, an obsession that has been killing town centres and village life for decades, both here and abroad. Unlike the bicycle which brought new-found independence without damaging the comforts of village life, the car – with its range and convenience – has lured people into a world where you need a car. At the urging of car manufacturers insisting the railways were no longer necessary, politicians of the 50s and 60s cut the local lines that helped keep small communities connected and alive, pruning them back so far and fast as to almost extinguish that mode of transport, and to make the necessity of car ownership a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Shapp describes how many of her fellow residents are people returning to Glenarm, who had always thought of it as home where she, having lived in several places across the continental USA never felt that unique connection to one particular place. I too, having lived in various places Bristol, Brazil, London and Kent. I marvel at what it must be like to have – as many of my work colleagues did – to have lived a whole life in one place, so close in fact that you end up working at the school where you were yourself a pupil. Like the Glenarm returners, my wife lived abroad (well in England) for thirty years before time and the gentle decline of aging parents called her home again – just as soon as I could find a job to bring us here. Schapp’s descriptions of forest walks and garden bird visitations illustrate the mosaic of details that can build a connection to a place – and indeed in a phrase I have not heard outside Northern Ireland, people speak of their home-place, like Seamus Heaney’s Homeplace in Bellaghy near Magherafelt.

Much of this book – of Schapp’s own personal journey – is about grief and guilt, of having missed the moment when her husband died in hospital with only a truculent nun for company. I was driving up the A2 in Kent when my mother died, summoned by a 2.00 am phone call from my dad that it was time, but though I was too late to say goodbye at least my dad and sister were with mum when she died in her own home. As Schapp meets and talks with other widows it is the openness to grief and discussing it in Ireland that helps in her healing, though as she notes all griefs are different. Even people with whom she forms bonds based on shared early widowhood, no experience is ever quite alike. It was particularly poignant reading about the woman who cared for her husband and had to confine her own grief during those difficult months to the darkness of nighttime and the separation of the backroom where she slept alone. The burdens of caring, the almost impossibility of self-care exert their own toll well before the moment of passing.

Like Shapp I found some refuge in returning late in life to the student existence. My wife had taken the MA course the year before me and – had Schapp’s original intended timeline proved possible – it might have been she who shared the workshops and seminars with Schapp. Instead her experience alerted me to the opportunity to take a career break from an increasingly onerous day job as a high school principal and – all being well – I could find a path where I could segue into early retirement.

Like Schapp I enjoyed the inversion of experience from educator to educated, the thrill of set reading that might almost make one think education was wasted on the young. I have fond memories of those sessions though the ‘in person’ discussion groups were sadly truncated by the lockdowns that covid necessitated.

Like Schapp we quickly settled into the routine of a quarantine household, though there were five of us sharing the duties of disinfecting the shopping, where Schapp had just her partner – one of those sliding door moments where a chance connection years early could be rekindled and grow into something very special.

In an afterward Schapp writes about the search for a title, and how the working title eventually became the real one and it is a good choice. The Slow Road North captures the book’s elegant chronicling of a journey through geography, grief and – above all else – people. As with all good journeys (and what is life itself if not a journey?) the joy lies less in the destination and more in the sights and connections you collect along the way.

[Laura O'Kane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir from a Jewish, native New York writer who moved to the small village of Glenarm, Northern Ireland while coping with the death of her husband and mother held special attraction for me, as my mother-in-law was from Glenarm, and I have visited many of the places the author mentions in her book. However, while I appreciated her clear-eyed writing, which was often quite lyrical and evocative, the narrative skips about quite a bit, and I sometimes felt as though I had missed pieces of the story. But she does a very good job capturing her newfound village and country, as well as the grief she had to navigate. Yet, while her personal history is interesting, it sometimes seemed almost clumsily inserted into the story. Overall, however, it is a thought-provoking account of someone moving from one of the largest cities in the world, to a wee village in the North of Ireland to help heal her broken heart.

[Omm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughtful and lyrical prose, an examination of grief and restlessness without self-pity and a generous helping of self-effacing humor- all descriptions of a book that almost defies categorization. It's a love letter to her late husband, to New York, and to Ireland. Globetrotting and exploration, a life in miniature, overall a worthwhile read.

[Patricia Ahern · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an ok read—slow and redundant in some areas.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first trip to Ireland was with a good friend from college in 1999 and was the beginning of my own understanding that a place I'd never been could feel like home. Though I was just a tourist wearing a just-purchased Aran sweater of gigantic proportions, something shifted in me. My friend liked it too, and 26 years later she sent me the book of her friend Rosie Schaap because she thought I'd like it. She wasn't wrong.

Though Schaap's memoir deals with surfing waves of grief after the death of her partner in New York--and she explores it well--there is much joy to be had in these pages when she decides that she needs to escape her American life and move to a village in Northern Ireland where she'd once visited and where she makes a new home for herself.

Schaap's writing is the sort that left me feeling as if she'd read my mind. I regularly had to stop and reflect on her thoughts about grief, life in general, Ireland, books, New York, etc. At times, it's funny. At times, it's a tearjerker. She suggests that Ireland is a good place to grieve, and I've found that to be true. My second trip to Ireland was a few weeks after my father died, and the summer I spent there was a comfort. She describes her experience so well.

This book will appeal to those who like a good memoir, who have interest in Ireland, who are trying to understand grief, and who are fans of quality writing.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from a Goodreads' giveaway. The author, Rosie Schaap, was married and living in New York with her husband Frank. Frank became ill and passed away. The following year, Rosie's mother also died. Rosie had traveled to Ireland and felt a strong pull to return. She decided to sell many of her belongings and packed up and moved to Glenarm, a small town in northern Ireland. In this town, near woods and the ocean, she was able to heal from her painful losses.

I found this book interesting because after the death of a loved one, some people remain in their homes with their memories and others move away where there is not a constant reminder of the lost loved one. I felt that the author's move to Ireland was the best medicine to heal her sadness over her deceased family members. Perhaps, if Rosie had stayed in New York, her life would not have been as peaceful. The book definitely gives the reader ideas to reflect upon specifically, taking a chance to relocate to help heal the soul after a loss. I would recommend this book to read since everyone has to deal with the death of a loved one.

[John Pehle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Late in the book (on page 247 in the edition I read), Rosie Schaap labels herself a pessimist and writes "We bear witness to trauma and pain and devastation every day...Terrible things do happen, and they may as well happen to us."

No single quote could be more misleading about the tone of a book because Schaap has written a warm, introspective, and even joyful memoir about her efforts to cope with the loss of her husband and, one year and nineteen days later, her mother. "The Slow Road North" does have its dark and sad moments but, time after time, the author finds goodness in people, gets support from unexpected places, and learns to live her fullest life alongside the sadness and grief that, eventually, we all feel about someone or many someones. On top of the well crafted personal narrative, we get a wonderful glimpse into life in a small village in the North of Ireland. The cultural differences, the access to natural beauty, and the separation from New York City all help Schaap heal and, by sharing with us, she has allowed us all to get a little healing. This is a powerful and delightful memoir.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schaap couldn't seem to stop grieving the death of her husband, nor could she stop feeling guilt because she hadn't been by his bedside when he was dying and she wasn't there when the last moment came. Through her career in journalism and writing, she had been to Ireland a couple times, so she pays another visit to Northern Ireland. A tiny village, decreasing in population and amenities, but right on the coast and at the edge of a large forest preserve becomes her new home. She describes her new neighbors, her new friends, the annoying children who seem to have it in for a newcomer, and the politics of a part of Great Britain that has seen its share of political violence. Not only is she able to work through grief for her husband, she shares much about the fraught relationship with her mother, who had also died recently. She finds peace, and a new love just as Covid shuts down the world and the tiny village is their refuge. Inner turmoil, but great descriptions of a place bypassed by most.

[John Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having visited Northern Ireland in 2019, when Rosie Schaap moved to Northern Ireland, I picked up the book for her take on the country. I had found it to be extremely beautiful, but also very sad with the ongoing enmity between the Protestants and Catholics that still remain. Rosie Schaap, a New York Jew, moves into the small town of Glenarm, Northern Ireland, and tries to find peace for the grief she had felt from the death of her too young husband, Frank, and that of her very complicated mother, a year later. Her grief could not be assuaged, but she thought it might in this place with its beauty and around a people who seemed to handle death in a different way. The book brings out others she meets who are also dealing with grief, a new love affair with a man named Mark, and her readings and writing on the subject of grief. Eventually, in this beautiful village in a complicated country, she slowly comes to term with her grief. The book is a meandering, clear-eyed and sympathetic look at herself in this place.