Thin Places

I have some mixed feelings about this book. There are no half stars on Goodreads, and 3 stars felt mean so I have plumped for 4. I had different views of this book as a reader than as a writer. As a reader I got one level of enjoyment, as a writer I think I learnt something. <br /><br />Dochartaigh is, at her best, a very fine writer indeed. I have no doubt she will go on to write more wonderful material. Parts of this book are brilliant, particularly at the start. And she takes an unusual, and I think a bold and potentially really good, approach of interweaving autobiographical, historical and natural history materials. <br /><br />The book is primarily a memoire about her and her troubled life in Northern Ireland, getting over her very difficult childhood living in Derry through the height of the troubles, and her outlet into the natural and to some extent, spiritual world. The spiritual world is not that of religions, but the other world of spirits that surrounds the Irish landscape and wildlife. But the book is not a memoire in the standard way. For me, the book is about belonging and not belonging, about boundaries - real and imagined between people and places, and about the way we flow between those boundaries.<br /><br />Generally, I found it to be a good and interesting read. However, the writing at times feels like a mechanism for personal catharsis. There is no issue with this, but such catharsis, being such a deep personal thing, is not always interesting for the reader. I felt the balance was not quite right, and towards the end of the book I started to feel it was about 20% too long. However, there is much to admire, and some passages really are magical. I have no regrets about reading it and few images from it will stay with me.

I really struggled with this book. I think I thought it would be more about nature than it was. That's not to say that it wasn't, but the focus and drive of the book is the author's working through her incredibly traumatic life and the key events in that journey that led her home. She references the 'thin places' often but for myself I didn't get a full sense of what they were like as places, more like what they represented to her as an individual and how she was able to connect with her trauma in those spaces. The book is very much about her inner landscape and how that shaped her responses in later life. It was a pretty devastating read. It felt to me like her recovery was pretty raw and facilitated as much by her writing as the things she writes about.

Thin Places is something of an enigma, when I bought it, I thought it was in the nature writing genre, the inside cover calls it a mix of memoir, history and nature writing - such a simplistic description of the reading experience, which for me was something else.<br /><blockquote>Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds, beyond experience.</blockquote><br />This book is a kind of cathartic experience of being inside the experience of someone who has experienced trauma, who has yet to awaken from its implications, or be conscious of its effect - but who by the end will by necessity awaken to it, because it can no longer be contained inside the mind, the body and for the good of the soul, it must be expressed, broken down, if there is to be any change of coming out the other side.<br /><blockquote>Even as a child, I could see no way of staying in my hometown. The edges of the broken and breaking city never quite held themselves in place, and my own family life mirrored those fractures. </blockquote><br />So the first part of the book I can only describe as "being in the fog". We know Kerri Ni Dochartaigh was born in Derry on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the height of the troubles, that her parents were of mixed heritage, one Protestant, the other Catholic, they existed in the oftentime dangerous in-between, safe in neither space or only temporarily. <br /><blockquote>We have a somewhat difficult relationship with the word 'tradition' in Ireland, particularly in the North. The way that religion has latched itself onto the politics of this land has left many people with no desire to look at the imagery of their ancestors; the story of their past. We have lost, broken, murdered, burned, stolen, hidden and undone - all in the false name of tradition. Lives, places and stories have been ripped out by their roots because <i>'that's how it has always been'</i>. I wonder, I wonder so very much these days, what wealth of imagery and meaning was lost when we became so focused on our differences here, that we buried the things that had once tied us together, the things that might still know a way through, for us all.</blockquote><br />Though we are told this, the uninitiated reader doesn't really understand what that means, how it actually manifests on the human level, on a day to day basis - until she arrives at the point where she realises, she needs to confront the reality of the things that happened - because she is losing it - and finding it harder and harder to function in the bubble of denial that allows her to go about her day, to work, to live.<br /><blockquote>The past, present and future all seemed to blend into one, and every single part of the story held sorrow that I couldn't get rid of, no matter how deeply I try to bury it. So many different things - situations, times of year, people - made the bad things rise up from inside to bite me again. Triggers, I know that now. It left me feeling scared, hollowed out and with no control over any of it, not really knowing how to make it - any of it - stop.</blockquote><br />And so she begins to share the events. And it's tough to read, to absorb as we imagine the magnitude of the effect these events must have had on a child, on an adolescent, a young adult. But what courage, to make that decision, to visit that dark place, to express those thoughts, recount those events, relive the disappointments, feel again the sense of abandonment, to trust that writing about it might bring one towards healing.<br /><br />While there are those moments of how nature and the many metaphors and symbolism of it kept her sane, this is more about the nature of mind and the necessity of finding and/or making meaning in navigating the troubles of life, in order to overcome past hurts, reconcile traumatic events and find a way to live again, to believe in hope, to elevate one's self-worth and be able to function in a relationship.<br /><br />It is a tough read and one that we as readers are privileged to gain insight from, because Kerri ni Dochartaigh could very easily not be here, and yet she is - and I like to believe that in part that is because the sharing of her experience and path to healing are an important part of her soul's purpose in this life, this extraordinary book is part of her life's work, she has found a way to articulate to the many, the terrible destructive effect of divisiveness and intolerance on young people, the effect of not feeling safe during childhood and adolescence and the difficulty of becoming something other than what you knew growing up - of learning to trust, to love, of connecting to the natural environment, learning a near lost language that connects the Irish to their environment and dwelling in just being.<br /><blockquote>Naming things, in the language that should always have been offered to you, is a way to sculpt loss. A way to protect that which we still have.</blockquote><br />Hard going at times, but extraordinary, a beating, bleeding heart, ripped open to heal.

This is a powerful memoir by Irish writer Kerri Ní Dochartaigh. She writes poignantly about how out of experiencing so much violence, poverty, trauma, and struggles with suicide, she found healing and hope through love, therapy, poetry, landscape, community, identity, and Celtic thin places in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall-those places where the veil of heaven and earth meet bringing one outside of time briefly. I have experienced those thin places myself in the mountains of North Carolina, Scotland, England, Scotland, and Ireland. I highly recommend this book.

This is one of those books where it is hard to do a review that does justice, there is no way I can put together enough coherent words to show you just how powerful this book is….but I’m gonna do it anyways. As a person who has led a safe and sheltered life it really does blow my mind how some people are able to take so many hits in life, be witness to so much trauma and still be standing on their own two feet at the end of it. Kerri was born to a Protestant parent and the other parent was a Catholic, in the time and place she was born this was not a safe combination. Humanity’s ability to be so cruel always amazes me, neighbours can so easily turn on each other with (to me) no logical reason. Growing up in and around Derry, Kerri was witness to a huge amount of violence and hatred and once there was peace in Ireland, the world managed to find new ways to traumatise her.<br /><br />I think Kerri has been very brave in writing this book, being at a stable time of her life this must have brought up so much darkness and pain and to then put it out there in the world where any Tom, Dick and Harry (all 3 are well known trolls) can read it and then potentially deal with abuse over it’s content shows you just how strong this Lady is. I can’t say I’ve “enjoyed” this book, I was mesmerised by it, the honesty almost sweeps you away and you forget this is someone’s memoirs. The writing is poetic, at times it even feels like a chant, I know that sounds weird but when Kerri stops for a moment and directly addresses the reader, a chant is exactly how it felt to me. My favourite part was the bits about nature, when Kerri is at her darkest moment, when her grip on life is at it’s weakest nature steps in and pulls her back from the edge, it is only fleeting but enough for Kerri to know she has been seen, it’s only at these times you realise you’ve been holding your breath for the last 5 pages. It was great to see that she still has so much for the island even though she has faced so much there.<br /><br />This is a book everybody needs to have a read of, maybe it will give you some hope, Kerri has faced so much and is still here. I loved the little dedication to M in the acknowledgments, some fine words there.<br /><br />Blog review: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/10/05/thin-places-by-kerri-ni-dochartaigh/">https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...</a>

I've become a fan of what I might call Irish Noir fiction. So many talented writers continue to emerge in Ireland and I enjoy in particular the dark tragi-comedy that many express. Landscape is often a powerful 'character' in these stories which, my having made a number of visits to the country, makes the reading experience so strong. So when I read that 'Thin Places' was a mixture of memoir, history and nature I jumped in.<br /><br />As I read the first chapters I felt a reluctant disappointment. Had no-one ever suggested to the author one of the first rules of writing – show don't tell? Key moments seemed to be merely referred to rather than conveyed. Landscape and the nature within it, so crucial to the author's experience, were expressed through a kind of magic realism so private that I struggled to feel the weight of trauma behind it. I didn't understand what a thin place is. I concede this could well be my failure of empathy or a reductionist attitude.<br /><br />'Loss' and 'grief' figure overwhelmingly in the book but, again, as words on the page rather than as a consequence of realised experience. But it was through these encounters that I began to respond to the book in a different way. The author presents her life in the family and social sphere as unrelentingly painful and frequently traumatic. But, I wondered, how can you feel so much loss and grief if you have never had joy, if you've never experienced anything you wanted to keep and hold onto? How can you miss what you never had?<br /><br />So we are drawn into the mysteries of the human heart. We discover that someone so traumatised is capable of summoning to her heart a knowledge of what she has never had. She grieves for a lost childhood without knowing what it should have been. The demon-creatures she evokes, some healing, some terrifying, exist in the landscape of her psyche where she seeks to live out alternative states of being. The black crow which figures frequently suggests the black dog that can visit those experiencing depression. I suppose the thin places are those where her spirit is most stimulated to enter this potential state of healing.<br /><br />Kerri ni Dochartaigh was prescribed counselling relatively late, after enduring much pain and trauma. What we are reading in this book is self-counselling through talking/writing therapy before formal counselling had become available to her. So we have obsession, circularity, esoteric visions, gnawing on the bones of experience. In her conclusion she suggests she has found some peace.

I received a copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.<br /><br />It's hard to know how to review, let alone rate, this book. On the one hand: it's an intense autobiographical account of the author's trauma, which manages to discuss the Troubles and Brexit with extreme sensitivity and respect, and is beautifully written too. On the other: it does drag on a bit. <br /><br />The problem I had was that eventually every chapter became a bit repetitive, with descriptions of harrowing events Dochartaigh went through and then how nature helped her cope and heal. After a while it becomes hard to cope with all the traumatic experiences that are recounted, and I felt numb and exhausted. I had a similar response to all the descriptions of how nature helped Dochartaigh heal, which I found very similar each time. The writing style became quite grating and the structure also seemed a bit odd - roughly chronological, but then some things overviewed before they were fully recounted, such as Dochartaigh's experience of alcoholism.<br /><br />I feel unfair complaining about these things, because in many ways it's a beautiful and well-written book, and I appreciated the insight into what it was like living through the Troubles in Derry. I think that ultimately, it just wasn't the book for me; but I don't regret reading it either, and maybe it will be the book for you.

The "thin places" of the title refers to (in the author's own words - please be minded any quotes may change in the final version of the book): "places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in place between worlds, beyond experience."<br /><br />I love the idea of this, and the blend of nature and memoir always intrigues me, but I'm sorry to say little here worked for me. I didn't feel wholly convinced by the connections the author looks for between emotions, memory and place, and think this has been done in a more cogent and affecting way elsewhere.<br /><br /><i>Thank you Netgalley and Canongate for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.</i>

A raw and honest memoir - difficult to describe but highly recommended read. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author and I think that format definitely added to the poignancy and emotional impact.

Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh may be one of the last books I read in the strange year that has been 2020 but it is also one of the best. I found myself slowing down to savour the beautiful words on the page and the vivid images they conjured. The book is part memoir, part nature writing and part history, taking the author's story of growing up in Derry as part of a mixed Faith family during the Troubles and showing how from a very young age her connection with the natural world was a grounding force and a safety net during difficult times. <br />The theme of borders, both natural and man made runs through the book which feels so current in the time of Brexit and all the particular concerns that the people of Northern Ireland have about the process. It is an incredibly personal piece of writing , the author is courageous enough to share some very dark moments from her past, but there is also a lot of hope , and so much beauty in her writing. Her descriptions of the natural world almost sing from the page , so lyrical, evocative and powerful. that I am in awe. <br />I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own .