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A review by saguaros
Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
3.5
I hesitate a lot of this rating, even the rounding up or down leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, this is a memoir, a powerful one, often raw and extremely vulnerable, that moved me to tears a few times and made me ponder and reflect a few times more. There’s certainly a lot of beauty in it, both in what it describes and in the way it does so. On the other hand, it is overly long and repetitive, especially in its last third or so, and is perhaps too esoteric for me in places. This isn’t necessarily bad, processing trauma and grief is different for everyone, but it made it intangible at times in a way that felt like you were just skimming the surface of something while it seemed to want to dig in instead.
I love nature memoirs, but I’d say this is more memoir than nature. Nature, here, feels less concrete and more a space. A space for the author to heal, to grow, to find solace. But she writes of it—of the rivers and the hills and the moths and the birds especially—in ways that were beautiful but felt to me too distant at the same time. Nature as space, both physical and spiritual. I’m not a good enough writer to find the words to describe what I mean specifically by it, but it’s simply not quite what I am looking for generally when I read nature writing. I don’t expect pure science or biology or anything like that—this is a memoir after all—but for me connection was lacking at times, perhaps lost in the more spiritual/esoteric approach. While nature is prominent in it, if I had been in charge of categorizing this book, I don’t think I would have considered it part nature writing.
The sheer trauma and the tragedies that the author experienced as a child and then adult were horrific and moving. Her journey to healing was harrowing yet hopeful. Her observations about conflict, war, the hollowing of our spaces, families, selves, the generational traumas that we carry, etc felt timely in a new, horrific, and pressing sort of way. Yet, so many specific events of her life felt both raw and real, but also vague and intangible. Perhaps this is simply the nature of trauma too, the forgetting, the fog of memory.
The last few chapters felt like each one of them could be the last. I read this in the audiobook format and I had to check my phone every time because it felt like this was the end and yet there were more chapters to come. A lof of her observations about spaces, about birds, symbols, hope, etc became repetitive or overly extended. It became difficult to really soak up the words.
But I’m really glad I read it all the same, there’s a lot of honesty and pain and beauty to see between its pages.
I love nature memoirs, but I’d say this is more memoir than nature. Nature, here, feels less concrete and more a space. A space for the author to heal, to grow, to find solace. But she writes of it—of the rivers and the hills and the moths and the birds especially—in ways that were beautiful but felt to me too distant at the same time. Nature as space, both physical and spiritual. I’m not a good enough writer to find the words to describe what I mean specifically by it, but it’s simply not quite what I am looking for generally when I read nature writing. I don’t expect pure science or biology or anything like that—this is a memoir after all—but for me connection was lacking at times, perhaps lost in the more spiritual/esoteric approach. While nature is prominent in it, if I had been in charge of categorizing this book, I don’t think I would have considered it part nature writing.
The sheer trauma and the tragedies that the author experienced as a child and then adult were horrific and moving. Her journey to healing was harrowing yet hopeful. Her observations about conflict, war, the hollowing of our spaces, families, selves, the generational traumas that we carry, etc felt timely in a new, horrific, and pressing sort of way. Yet, so many specific events of her life felt both raw and real, but also vague and intangible. Perhaps this is simply the nature of trauma too, the forgetting, the fog of memory.
The last few chapters felt like each one of them could be the last. I read this in the audiobook format and I had to check my phone every time because it felt like this was the end and yet there were more chapters to come. A lof of her observations about spaces, about birds, symbols, hope, etc became repetitive or overly extended. It became difficult to really soak up the words.
But I’m really glad I read it all the same, there’s a lot of honesty and pain and beauty to see between its pages.