A review by bluelilyblue
All Down Darkness Wide: A Memoir by Seán Hewitt

I might have been slightly unprepared for how heavy a read this would be, and just how often I'd have to put it down and distract myself with something else. Nevertheless, I appreciated it for its alertness to the invisible threads connecting things and people and places, and obviously for its self-aware literariness--the bits and pieces of Hopkins are quite skillfully woven through the narrative, and I couldn't not relate to the compulsion to turn to poetry when striving to make sense of difficult experiences. I think there is a fine balance here between a viewpoint where the world is suffused with metaphor and lush language, and one where there is pure, untranslatable feeling, and words are something one desperately grasps at for a little clarity.