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A review by leoniepeonie
Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I thought this was incredibly beautiful. I was dead set on giving it five stars from the first couple of chapters and that wavered a little bit towards the end, so it's ended up a 4.5.
Ní Dochartaigh's writing style is just dripping with gorgeous imagery and feeling and I relished the way she played with words. I listened to this as an audiobook and it really lends itself to that medium, read aloud like poetry rather than prose at some points. The author narrated it herself (I listened to it at 1.2x speed without noticing any strangeness, as she spoke very slowly) and each word felt very purposeful and precise to the point that I was just lost in it at times. It was a moving, meandering piece that knitted together grief and loss and trauma with landscapes and human customs, and a sense of things lying outside of time. I really look for and love coincidence and meaning in the natural world and this played with that beautifully.
One complaint is that I felt the book went on a little too long - as awed as I was by the beauty of it, I started to feel overwhelmed towards the end and found that the last chapter was quite repetitive and obvious in being an attempt to tie things together nicely. I felt like I had my head around the timeline of ní Dochartaigh's life by about halfway through the book too, and then felt disorientated when she started picking back over that timeline with extra details and it got me pretty confused. A tighter edit might have helped clear that up, but those issues aside, this was gorgeous. I'd been convinced I'd buy it in print and read it again, but she might have lost me with that ending.
Ní Dochartaigh's writing style is just dripping with gorgeous imagery and feeling and I relished the way she played with words. I listened to this as an audiobook and it really lends itself to that medium, read aloud like poetry rather than prose at some points. The author narrated it herself (I listened to it at 1.2x speed without noticing any strangeness, as she spoke very slowly) and each word felt very purposeful and precise to the point that I was just lost in it at times. It was a moving, meandering piece that knitted together grief and loss and trauma with landscapes and human customs, and a sense of things lying outside of time. I really look for and love coincidence and meaning in the natural world and this played with that beautifully.
One complaint is that I felt the book went on a little too long - as awed as I was by the beauty of it, I started to feel overwhelmed towards the end and found that the last chapter was quite repetitive and obvious in being an attempt to tie things together nicely. I felt like I had my head around the timeline of ní Dochartaigh's life by about halfway through the book too, and then felt disorientated when she started picking back over that timeline with extra details and it got me pretty confused. A tighter edit might have helped clear that up, but those issues aside, this was gorgeous. I'd been convinced I'd buy it in print and read it again, but she might have lost me with that ending.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Violence, and Grief