Reviews

Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri ní Dochartaigh

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gnuoymas's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

2.5

a harrowing memoir, this book takes us through the turbulent childhood of kerri ní dochartaigh who was raised during the height of the troubles. as she recounts her life up until 2020, she paints a traumatic, but ultimately hopeful, picture of living in derry, northern Ireland.

i had high hopes for this book as this is where my family is from. i wanted to dive in and better understand the trauma of the troubles from a first-hand account. kerri has gone through it, that's for sure. she tells us of the trauma she had to endure in explicit detail while balancing it with interesting reflection. she tackles themes of reconciliation and reciprocity of physical places, transformation through nature, and collective trauma. what i found most interesting is her discussions on place; the how and why a place is sacred, and how we can reclaim their ancient meanings for modern times. i think thin places exist all around us, a feeling of groundedness and clarity that can be felt while swimming in bodies of water, hiking through forests, and sitting in the expansiveness of a busy city. she shows us how she overcame trauma through nature, how briefly losing our sense of self can help us find peace in ourselves, and running away from a place steeped in personal trauma may be the only place that can be truly healing.

i think what i struggled with is how repetitive this memoir was. each chapter felt like a reflection on the same themes paired with a different part of her life while not providing anything new or insightful to consider. it, at times, felt indulgent and lacking in the depth that i was hoping for. this one took me about a month to finish for this reason, even though it's 250 pages.

i am CONTINUING to go through it with each of these gd Irish authors!!! SOMEONE GIVE THEM LEXAPRO OR SOMETHING

mepresley's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

some lovely writing interweaving that author's personal struggles with trauma, metal illness, and healing--particularly with inter-generational trauma (here tied to the Troubles and thus tracing a line back to the Famine and emigration). Her personal losses are mixed with the losses of Irish culture, tradition, and language, and with the loss of habitat and species. She mourns the history of her hometown, Derry, and her lost childhood, and she both grieves for and celebrates the time she spent lost and running from a hurt that was mapped deep inside her, that she had been taught to silence and did not even begin to know how to name, how to share with others.

Though my childhood was very different from hers, still it was a childhood with the same sense of not belonging and not being safe, and my young adulthood was similarly spent running from what was in me all along and my inability to truly speak it across a divide.

To return to the book and stop being so self-centered, her struggles during the Troubles are intensified by the fact that her family does not belong. She has parents from differing backgrounds, one Irish and one Protestant, and that is not acceptable in 1980s Ireland. They are run from one side of the tracks/ river to the other side, and then run from there, too. I loved the passages about their brief time on Earhart Hill.

I loved the passages that captured depression and hopelessness, the passages that explored Irish language and folklore, the passages describing hillsides and bodies of water and moths and butterflies and blackbirds. Loved the sense of magical realism surrounding thin places, and felt that I completely grasped the concept.

Didn't mind the way the narrative seemed to make circles rather than being linear. It felt appropriate though it wasn't always clear why some things needed to be foreshadowed so far in advance (her drinking, for instance) but I did ultimately feel that the book needed huge amounts of editing.

All of the personal reflection felt like raw journaling and there's a beauty in that but it was ultimately too redundant. A good deal of content could have been cut from the book not only without losing anything, but with clear gains, including improving the balance between showing and telling. I saw other reviews mention this, but despite her skill with minute descriptions, and of course accounting for the holes that trauma leaves in our memory and her right to withhold more intimate information, there is a lot that is glossed over and never filled in, a lot that is stated rather than experienced with her through her writing.

Still, her language can be downright lyric, haunting, and poetic. The book moved me to tears more than once.

sophcarter19's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

laurenokill's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

thestarrfish's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

This book was such a beautiful and meditative piece on grief, trauma, loss, as well as nature and how it connects to all these topics. It was a slow, savored read.