A Ghost in the Throat

Description

An PostIrish Book Awards Nonfiction Book of the Year AGuardianBest Book of 2020 Shortlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize Shortlisted for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize Winner of the James Tait Black Biography Prize ANew York TimesNew & Noteworthy Title Longlisted for the 2021 Gordon Burn Prize A Buzzfeed Recommended Summer Read APublishers WeeklyBest Book of 2021 ABook RiotBest Book of 2022 An NPR Best Book of 2021 A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2021 AGlobe and MailBook of the Year AWinnipeg Free PressTop Read of 2021 AnEntropy MagazineBest of the Year ALitHubBest Book of 2021 ANew York TimesCritics Top Book of 2021 A National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistWhen we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.On discovering her murdered husbands body, an eighteenth-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhln Dubh N Chonaills poem travels through the centuries, finding its way to a new mother who has narrowly avoided her own fatal tragedy. When she realizes that the literature dedicated to the poem reduces Eibhln Dubhs life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poets girlhood and old age; her unique rages, joys, sorrows, and desires; the shape of her days and site of her final place of rest. What follows is an adventure in which Doireann Ni Ghriofa sets out to discover Eibhln Dubhs erased lifeand in doing so, discovers her own.Moving fluidly between past and present, quest and elegy, poetry and those who make it,A Ghost in the Throatis a shapeshifting book: a record of literary obsession; a narrative about the erasure of a people, of a language, of women; a meditation on motherhood and on translation; and an unforgettable story about finding your voice by freeing anothers.Praise forA Ghost in the ThroatThe ardent, shape-shiftingA Ghost in the Throatis N Ghrofas offering She pieces together N Chonaills life as if she is darning a hem, keeping the story from unraveling further. She interrupts herself to stuff a child into a car seat, wrestle a duvet into its cover, pick pieces of pasta off the floor What is this ecstasy of self-abnegation, what are its costs? She documents this tendency without shame or fear but with curiosity, even amusement The real woman N Ghrofa summons forth is herself.Parul Sehgal,New York TimesA powerful, bewitching blend of memoir and literary investigation N Ghrofa is deeply attuned to the gaps, silences and mysteries in womens lives, and the book reveals, perhaps above all else, how we absorb what we lovea child, a lover, a poemand how it changes us from the inside out.Nina Maclaughlin,New York TimesA Ghost in the Throatmoves between past and present with hallucinogenic intensity as the narrator uncovers the details of the dead womans life, each revelation deepening her own sense of herself as a writer and a woman and creating in the process a brave and beautiful work of art.Republic of Consciousness PrizeElectrifying and genre-bending The books title conveys the uncanny feeling N Ghrofa had while writing the book, of having anothers voice emanate from her own throat N Ghrofas quest sometimes feels like DNA-sleuthing, but with earth and texts taking the place of cheek swabs The final act of reciprocity may be that one great work has ultimately spawned another. N Ghrofas book wouldnt exist without N Chonaills poem, in the same way the poem wouldnt exist without the death of Art OLeary: both are rooted in agonizing, exquisite emotion.Globe & MailA detailed tapestry that threads Eibhln Dubhs family histories with the authors own translations of her poem from the Irish, N Ghrofas essayistic and intimate style recalls the inter-disciplinary perambulations of W.G. Sebald and the uncompromising feminism of Maggie Nelson A Ghost in the Throatis a kaleidoscopic book of homemaking that centers the intuitive knowledge of the body in order to learn to liveagain, again, and again.Shazia Hafiz Ramji,Chicago Review of BooksConfident, poetic, artful and analytical,A Ghost in the Throatconsidered much to forward an exploration of past and present, discovery and poetry, homage and truth.Clancy DIsa,Chicago Review of BooksA thrilling voyage into the lore of Ireland, motherhood, marriage, blood, and guts This is both a page-turner and a raw but erudite expression of a totally unique consciousness.Molly Young,New York MagazineThe novel, and I would argue its a novel, plays with form: Its also an academic text, a thriller, and a translation . . . It cracks open the past like an egg, and something new slouches from out within.Vulture, Best Irish Novels Published in the Past 15 YearsThe book begins with words that will become its refrain: This is a female text. In entwining her own existence with the story of a lauded poem and its overlooked author, [N Ghrofa] busts open the idea of the female text to encompass not merely self-sacrifice and scars, but also merriment, desire, and fierce, sustaining curiosity.The GuardianThis is a genre-bending book that combines poetry, sleuthing, literary prose, autobiography and the reclaims Irish feminist prose and poetry in one extraordinary and illuminating text. It brings the most epic Irish lamenting poem, the grief-stricken story of Eibhln Dubh N Chonaill, to life while reclaiming the power of life and storytelling for generations of women. It transcends its Irish roots to speak to loss, beauty and the capacity to retell forgotten stories everywhere.Fionnuala N Aolin,Just SecurityA Ghost in the Throatis something strange and very special: a ravishingly immersive telling of the way in which a poet and mothers obsession with a poet and mother who died centuries ago makes their different lives chime like bells.Emma DonoghueA fascinating hybrid work in which the voices of two Irish female poets ring out across centuries. When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries, writes N Ghrofa in her first work of proseand what a debut it is. Earning well-deserved accolades abroad, the book merges memoir, history, biography, autofiction, and literary analysis Lyrical prose passages and moving introspection abound in this unique and beautiful book.Kirkus(starred review)N Ghrofa is a poet through and through: in this prose work she writes lyrical sentences that make the physical world come alive It was around N Chonaills time that a new poetic form was invented: the aisling, a dream vision of Ireland revealing itself to the poet as a beautiful woman in need of saving. N Ghrofa certainly gives us a new, feminist vision of a woman saving another woman, righting a historical imbalance that persists in womens continued sacrifices.New York Review of BooksHistory mutes women; it also depends on them. This paradox is at the heart of aA Ghost in the Throat, an extraordinary literary memoir that finds life in buried spaces Feminist and feminine,A Ghost in the Throatgives defiant voice to hushed womanhood, in all of its pain and glory. Her images incandescent and brutal, N Ghrofa writes about the omens represented by starlings and about unearthed fragments of teacups, but also about caesarean scars, bleeding hangnails, and the consuming fire of her husbands touch A Ghost in the Throatis an achingly gorgeous literary exploration that establishes a sisterhood across generations.Foreword Reviews(starred review)Part autofiction, part literary study, and part keen-eyed examination of domestic labour, Doireann N Ghrofas strange, intense, and beautifully writtenA Ghost in the Throatis impossible to categorize. But that didnt discourage the Irish and UK media from hailing it as the triumph it is, in which N Ghrofa uses one of Irelands most iconic pieces of literature to tell her own story N Ghrofas obsessive interest in the piece and in its author, Eibhln Dubh N Chonaill, is the lens through which she tells her story of motherhood, her own childhood, and more.Open BookOne of the best books of this dreadful year Billed as a genre-busting blend of autofiction, essay, scholarship, sleuthing and literary translation, the book is an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism delivered in a lush, lyrical prose that dazzles readers from the get-go When you write like this there is almost nothing a writer cannot get away with.Sunday TimesPast versus present, blood versus milk, birth versus death, the Irish language versus the English: dichotomies abound, but the questions of womens lived experiences and who history remembers link them all.Paris ReviewBeautifully bewitching A Ghost in the Throatis a femaleand feministtext in its protest against the historical and cultural erasure of women like Eibhln Dubh In this extraordinary book N Ghrofa reclaims Dubh for posterity, reanimating her in the face of a centuries-long historiography that persistently shuts-out so very many vital female texts.Lit HubA book like this comes along once every few years and obliterates every clear definition of genre and form. I mean no exaggeration here:A Ghost in the Throatis astounding and utterly fresh.Irish IndependentWith luminous language and candid details, this book shimmers with honesty and scholarship. A truly original read.Sunday IndependentI wish to shout because this book is so profoundly beautiful and so beautifully profounda female text with so much to say about the ways we serve others (our families, our homes, our obsessions) and the ways that serving shapes us, and how being alone is never being alone, and how imagination always leaves us a few truths short, but it is what we have, it is the best we can do, it may even be the best of us. Imagination yields. It has given us the genuine miracle ofA Ghost in the Throat.Cleaver MagazineWorking from Eibhln Dubhs famous poem, Caoineadh Airt U Laoghaire, and her own research, the author manages to get closer to this historic woman than any other person has ever done before Her account is so vivid that we are almost there, with the pregnant Eibhln Dubh on horseback, when she comes upon the body of her murdered husband and is so overcome with grief that she scoops up his blood and drinks it.Clodagh FinnPart memoir, part literary biography and entirely original, this book somehow defies description. N Ghrofa attempts to reclaim the female texts of the past (read: writing about womens domestic work) that were either erased or never written as a way of making sense of her own history. The momentum of the bookunrelenting, exhaustingis a perfect meeting of form and function; the fatigue feel after reading this book is the fatigue of women at the end of every day. A bewitching, infuriating book.Amanda R. Toronto, WORD Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)This memoir will become a classic. I loved the writing style and how the beautiful prose unfolded into a bitter, brutal exploration of womanhood.Lisa Rae Bowman, Buxton Books (Charleston, SC)Its impossible to exaggerate my excitement for Doireann N Ghrofas unclassifiable, bewitching book,A Ghost in the Throat. It begins with a simple declaration: This is a female text, and builds into a fascinating exploration of the historical and cultural erasure of womens agency and perspectives Enthralling and beautifully written,Ghostis a stunning achievement.Lori Feathers, Interabang Books (Dallax, TX)Two women, separated by centuries, haunt each other in Doireann N Ghrofas stunning blend of memoir, literary criticism, poetry, and history.A Ghost in the Throatbeautifully captures how powerful a deep connection with a work of art can be. I am in awe of this book. It is everything I love about literature and more.Gal LeLamer, Books & Books (Miami, FL)Many writers have used classic literary works as a lens for examining their own lives, but none have ever given me the visceral thrill that Doireann N Ghrofa has. She doesnt meditate on a mysterious 18th-century Irish lament, she wrestles with it, turning it over and over to reveal myriad intimate connections to modern motherhood and marriage. To readA Ghost in the Throatis to hold in your hands a living, beating heart.James Crossley, Madison Books (Seattle, WA)A mesmerizing blend of memoir, history and research that is unlike anything Ive ever read. Simply brilliant.Shannon Alden, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)It is only right to readA Ghost in the Throatin the precious stolen moments of your own chaotic life. It is the only way to properly drink her crafted thoughts, her literary obsession, which hover through a life milk-stained-mundane. This book is a continued echo of silenced sighs of women, passed into words for each following generation to scour. Add this to your list, and know Doireann N Ghrofa feels your soul scream when you cross it off.Carrie Koepke, Skylark Bookshop (Columbia, MO)Earnest, lyrical, and truly indelible.Anakana Schofield, author ofBina