Reviews

Beautifully written mix of memoir, nature writing and history featuring "the Troubles" at the border of Northern Ireland, and the writer's journey towards healing from the trauma experienced.

Quotes I loved:

"He called such places 'skull of a shae'... The places he spoke of were locations where people felt very different from how they normally do. Places from which people came away changed. In these places you might experience the material and spiritual worlds coming together. Blood, worry and loos might sit together under the same tree as silence, stillness and hope. He spoke... of places where people had found answers and grace, where they had learned to forgive, where they had made peace and room for healing. Places where a veil is lifted away and light streams in, where you see a boundary between worlds disappear right before your eyes, places where you are allowed to cross any borders, where borders and boundaries hold no sway." (p. 12)
"Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds, beyond experience." (p. 23)
"Some places are ports in what can be - for many people - a life both unsettled and stormy, spaces in which you can leave that which is unfamiliar, all that you hold to be true, and move closer to all that is unknown. Closer to what some may view as the divine, the otherworldly; that which is rooted in something both constant, yet continuously bedding and flowing. They are in many ways a form of stopping place, liminal space that feels like it has been set aside for silence and deep, raw solitude. To carve out time within ourselves - unintentionally, even - to imagine what lies beyond the here and the now. Places where the veil is thin allow for pauses in the flow of what we know - or think we know - of time. A place to imagine what it all might mean, how we have been, how we maybe could be - a space to more clearly see a way through." (p. 23-24)
"Places that anchor, nurture and hold us do not have to be beautiful, cut-off, or even what might be described as wild." (p. 24)
"There are still places on this earth that sing of all that came and left, of all that is still here and of all that is yet to come. Places that have been touched, warmed, by the presence of something. By its heat, by its breath, by the beat of its heart. Places that hold on their surface a shadow-trace left behind by something we can still sense but no longer see." (p. 25)
"it took me many more years of growth to understand that sometimes, out of concrete cracks, hardy, bright poppies appear in places where no seed has been planted." (p. 27-28)
"I want those spaces and places to hold a trace of us all. I want us to hold part of those places within out bodies too - I want to believe that we are in this all together - that we are connected. I need to believe that the sea and the land - the places we have been shaped and held by - will show us how to live again, will remind us how to be. I need to believe that loss and grief are likes stones, too. That they might always remain on our internal landscape but that there is a stillness that comes after, a knowledge that will be left behind - that light will touch the stone - that we will be held in place despite the storms." (p. 40)
"Eco grief: the knowledge that we have lost so much - creatures, plants and places - that we mostly stand no chance at being able to bring back. The knowledge that the earth has been changed so vastly, so drastically, so fully, that we can never reverse the process. The knowledge that one person cannot stop, change, or undo this - any of it - but that we have to choose if we will stand back and watch,, or if we will fight." (p. 44)
"When loss comes onto our path, the circles through which the moon travels all fall out of kilter. Time seem to trick you, and everything feels foggy: grey and shrouded. The loss of one thing, I well know, can send a flare from a myriad of other times - other places - reminding us of anything and everything that we have already lost along the way, the fire of today burning kindling from a time long gone." (p. 90)
"Grief is a country that has no definite borderlines and that recognises no single trajectory. It is a space that did not exist before your loss, and that will never disappear from your map, no matter how hard you rub at the charcoal lines. You are changes utterly, and your personal geography becomes yours and yours only." (p. 97)
"Like the landscape and the seas, we too have been moulded by the past. The years have turned and battered us, held us close and then spat us out; the past has been the wildest of storms and the calmest of daybreaks all in one. We have been smoothed over like a well-worn stone. Some of us have been split; others, still are held in the bed of the sea; some of us have beautiful holes that run right through us, a hollowed-out gap through which to see. We are the landscape, and it is us. We made our past, and it made us." (p. 105)
"In the Celtic calendar, St Brigid's day falls midway between the winter solstice and vernal equinox... It is a moment in the circle of our year when we can see the light reflecting and refracting, when we breathe out the hardship of winter to learn that we have been strengthened; we have grown." (p. 161)
"There are places so thin that we see right through it all, through the untruths we have told ourselves about who we are. We see through every last bit of the things that we once thought defined us. We see that, like a landscape that has undergone vast and irreversible shifts, we, too, might be capable of change. We see that there might, in fact, be something a little like grace to an object that has been battered and undone, hewn away to less than it once was, chiselled and broken, sculpted and reworked into something so different from its original form. We see that we, too, might learn to live in a different way - within a changed and changing form. New, whittled lines alongside the old, healed cracks." (p. 191)
"There is still so much left here for us to protect, to nurture, to preserve, to hold dear." (p. 197)
"There is still hope though - so much hope, burrowed deep down inside so very many of us. No matter the political confusion, the ecological grief, the fear of the darkness ahead, we must leave room for that most human of all things: we must carve out room for hope." (p. 208-209)
"We are called back to places that, in times of difficulty, hold the power to give us what we need to get through." (p. 234)
"I think about journey and growth. About how the old saying about time - how it can heal - may be so much more than a truism. How time can even be a form of prayer, not to anyone or anything else. How maybe it is a form of prayer to your own self; how simply allowing yourself to be may be an act of deep and unimaginable healing, a way to give thanks... I think of how there are still places - parts of this earth - where light flows in like a river that has burst its banks. We hold in our open hands the strength to take suffering and turn it into song." (p. 245)
"These days around winter solstice time are precious, the pinnacle of a darkening that calls us to rest, to be still, to heal and to hope. The dark has been painted - over much time - as bring a negative thing, a part of existence to be wary of, a bringer of fear and things best not to be thought of. Yet nature tells us a different story. The earth tells us, over and over, as each year turns the circle of itself around, that it is in the dark where beginnings are found. Life first is dreamed, birthed and shaped in the absence of light. The seeds sown in autumn germinate underground through winter before appearing as shoots in the spring." (p. 249)

Content Warnings

toryhallelujah's review against another edition

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3.0

[ARC] 2.5 stars, rounding up to 3 to not be rude. DNFed at about 65%. She obviously has a ton of deep traumas and this book seems to be taking the place of a professional therapist. Too navel-gazey and circumspective (read: repetitive) for anyone not actually *her* imo. I had high hopes for the natural world sections, but they were also lacking.

acweber's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

sorcha_rosa's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

This book was beautiful. The nature writing, in between personal anecdotes, is stunning, and really draws on how the landscape of Ireland really makes you feel. I come from a town a little way outside of Derry, and the way that ni Dochartaigh writes about Derry and the North is so real and raw and vivid. The narrative at times it is hard - life in the North was hard - but it doesn't loose hope. Overall, highly highly recommend.

Content Warnings

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