A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
When it made this year's Republic of Consciousness longlist, A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa also made my to-read list.
A Ghost in the Throat sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about one woman freeing her voice by reaching into the past and finding another's.
I feel like there have been a lot of great books published recently about motherhood, and I'm struck by how female authors are still having to demonstrate how difficult the work of motherhood can be, how important it is that we talk about those difficulties, and how motherhood is a fit topic for literature. Motherhood is key to A Ghost in the Throat, whose protagonist is a stay-at-home mother, who first begins spending time with the Irish Gaelic poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill while using a breast pump. I love the way Doireann Ní Ghríofa talks about the body of her protagonist, and the physical changes she undergoes as a result of motherhood. I also love the way she talks about her protagonist giving away something of herself, and gaining something in return - in relation to nourishing her children, but also to acts of perceived selflessness and selfishness, and to her obsessive searching for details of the life of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill.
It was the protagonist's academic work that resounded with me the most. I know how it feels to read something which sparks an obsession, to search records for the women who have been erased, and to constantly find women described by men according to their relationship with other men. I love the way Doireann Ní Ghríofa talks about female texts, a term which she applies with brilliance. If there were moments where the story repeated itself slightly, or dwelt on something for a little too long, I felt this was appropriate for the obsessive, often cyclical, nature of our protagonist's search.
A Ghost in the Throat sits in the grey area between fiction and non-fiction, which might partly explain why the story feels so real, but this is evidently also a credit to the writing. I recognise myself in the protagonist's academic work, but I have no doubt that others will recognise themselves in other aspects of this story. I love the way our protagonist imagines the lives of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill and her family members, weaving a story out of small details, and I imagine that Doireann Ní Ghríofa does something similar with her own story.
A Ghost in the Throat sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about one woman freeing her voice by reaching into the past and finding another's.
I feel like there have been a lot of great books published recently about motherhood, and I'm struck by how female authors are still having to demonstrate how difficult the work of motherhood can be, how important it is that we talk about those difficulties, and how motherhood is a fit topic for literature. Motherhood is key to A Ghost in the Throat, whose protagonist is a stay-at-home mother, who first begins spending time with the Irish Gaelic poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill while using a breast pump. I love the way Doireann Ní Ghríofa talks about the body of her protagonist, and the physical changes she undergoes as a result of motherhood. I also love the way she talks about her protagonist giving away something of herself, and gaining something in return - in relation to nourishing her children, but also to acts of perceived selflessness and selfishness, and to her obsessive searching for details of the life of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill.
It was the protagonist's academic work that resounded with me the most. I know how it feels to read something which sparks an obsession, to search records for the women who have been erased, and to constantly find women described by men according to their relationship with other men. I love the way Doireann Ní Ghríofa talks about female texts, a term which she applies with brilliance. If there were moments where the story repeated itself slightly, or dwelt on something for a little too long, I felt this was appropriate for the obsessive, often cyclical, nature of our protagonist's search.
A Ghost in the Throat sits in the grey area between fiction and non-fiction, which might partly explain why the story feels so real, but this is evidently also a credit to the writing. I recognise myself in the protagonist's academic work, but I have no doubt that others will recognise themselves in other aspects of this story. I love the way our protagonist imagines the lives of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill and her family members, weaving a story out of small details, and I imagine that Doireann Ní Ghríofa does something similar with her own story.
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