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A review by saintsaens
A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
Disappointing retelling of a woman's fascination with a poem and its author.
The poem is very interesting, the search for the woman who first sang it in memory of the assassination of her own husband and the informations found about her are as well, but 80% of the book is more interested with how Doireann Ni Ghriofa is obsessed with being a mother and focused on her own self and her own life.
While slight parallels can be drawn by her very poetic (at times) writing between her experience and the woman she's fascinated by, more often than not it's a digression about herself, her life as a mother and a housewife, her troubles with understanding her husband and her constant need to feel helpful. The first lines are stricking, the rest of the text is inconsistent in writing style at best. And again, the poem has nothing to do with her own self reflection, which is considerably disappointing considering the themes of the poem (passionate love, thriving against social/political pressures, murder and a woman bent on revenge in her husband's name). In contrast, her life is painfully plain. And the text feels imbalanced as a result.
The stars are for the wild poetic lines that are scattered in the text, the information about Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, the text of the poem. Considering what she says in the book, I'm really not partial to her own translation of the poem (how much is artistic licence? how much is her status as a woman speaking? how much is her own knowledge and understanding of the working of Gaeilge? impossible to tell).
The book is described as "feminist". It's feminist in that it speaks about a woman. But honestly, nothing in her words and her behaviour shows a sign of understanding on the feminist movement, or maybe its bare minimum.
The poem is very interesting, the search for the woman who first sang it in memory of the assassination of her own husband and the informations found about her are as well, but 80% of the book is more interested with how Doireann Ni Ghriofa is obsessed with being a mother and focused on her own self and her own life.
While slight parallels can be drawn by her very poetic (at times) writing between her experience and the woman she's fascinated by, more often than not it's a digression about herself, her life as a mother and a housewife, her troubles with understanding her husband and her constant need to feel helpful. The first lines are stricking, the rest of the text is inconsistent in writing style at best. And again, the poem has nothing to do with her own self reflection, which is considerably disappointing considering the themes of the poem (passionate love, thriving against social/political pressures, murder and a woman bent on revenge in her husband's name). In contrast, her life is painfully plain. And the text feels imbalanced as a result.
The stars are for the wild poetic lines that are scattered in the text, the information about Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, the text of the poem. Considering what she says in the book, I'm really not partial to her own translation of the poem (how much is artistic licence? how much is her status as a woman speaking? how much is her own knowledge and understanding of the working of Gaeilge? impossible to tell).
The book is described as "feminist". It's feminist in that it speaks about a woman. But honestly, nothing in her words and her behaviour shows a sign of understanding on the feminist movement, or maybe its bare minimum.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
She is clearly abusive towards her husband, emotionnaly manipulative and very childish in all other aspects of her life. Everything of those behaviours transpire in her writing even if she doesn't own up to it.