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ez_heath's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Alcohol, Addiction, Abandonment, Grief, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Alcoholism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Murder, Suicide, and Emotional abuse
unfiltered_fiction's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Emotional abuse, Death, and Hate crime
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Alcoholism, Murder, Suicide attempt, Medical content, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, and Fire/Fire injury
monalyisha's review against another edition
4.0
Though she and her family escape, the rest of her life is marked by this trauma and more. Her best friend is senselessly murdered when she’s 16, in a place (not Derry) that she’d just begun to think of as “safe.” She battles alcoholism, depression, and suicidal ideation, as well as physical illness. She struggles to escape abusive relationships with others and with herself.
Though she finds sanctuary in nature (especially in the water, as well as through a connection with winged things), this isn’t an easy book. The story the words tell isn’t an easy one. Neither are the words themselves easy; oftentimes, sentences are fractured, mirroring the brokenness inside. The teller is also unabashedly in love with certain ideas — liminal spaces, in particular (see: title) — and I think the voice of those ideas sometimes overshadows her own, unique voice.
I wish there had been more structure, too - that each chapter had been more like a separate essay. It almost feels as though each page is written like it’s the end of the book, like the language is coming together and everything is wrapping up, continually. But then…it doesn’t. It keeps going. It’s as if she has become so sick of boundaries that her words and her work have none of the typical ones I’ve come to expect. And that’s not wrong. It’s just not easy. Dochartaigh’s deep consciousness of language sometimes reads as affected; when it doesn’t, it dips, soars, and sparkles.
I struggled as a reader at times. But on some level, that feels sort-of right. I’m glad that the author has come to a place where she’s so herself and is no longer afraid if her story makes other people feel unsettled. Even if I was unsure about the particulars of the telling, I was never uninterested or unbothered. I would read more by Kerri ni Dochartaigh - with the foreknowledge that I’d need to be comfortable with moving through her words slowly and with patient attention - which, fittingly, is also what nature asks of us.
Moderate: Abandonment, Alcoholism, Death, Suicide attempt, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, War, and Violence
sorcha_rosa's review
5.0
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, War, Suicidal thoughts, Murder, Mental illness, and Hate crime
Moderate: Abandonment and Fire/Fire injury