Audiobook7 hours
A Ghost in the Throat
Written by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Narrated by Siobhán McSweeney
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.
On discovering her murdered husband's body, an eighteenth-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's 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 Eibhlin Dubh's life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poet's 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 Eibhlin Dubh's erased life-and 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 Throat is 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 another's.
On discovering her murdered husband's body, an eighteenth-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's 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 Eibhlin Dubh's life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poet's 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 Eibhlin Dubh's erased life-and 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 Throat is 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 another's.
Author
Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a poet and essayist. In addition to A Ghost in the Throat, she is author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Ostana Prize, a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
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Reviews for A Ghost in the Throat
Rating: 4.294117647058823 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
34 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stunning- the story, the narrator, the depth of wisdom, and the capture of women’s passion. And McSweeney’s narration brings it all to life – she does not miss a nuance. I shall be reading this book again or rather listening to it. Music to my ears. Cait
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is very unusual. In part, it is a memoir of a strange life, lived and impart. It is a deep dive into a well respected literary figure in Ireland. It is a story well told and impeccably written.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The narration, depth of story and it’s history. Loved it