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