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Kerri ni Dochartaigh: Thin Places (2022, Canongate Books) 5 stars

Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry at the very height of the Troubles. One …

Words from the cracks

5 stars

This extraordinary book manages to offer so many things simultaneously: it is a story of trauma and healing, of moments and lifetimes, of time and space. The words are both written about and embedded in thin places.

Kerri Ní Dochartaigh is a wonderfully fluid writer, and this book tells her story of her life, beginning through the Troubles in Northern Ireland, caught in between places, with parents from either side of a bitter divide. These divides continue to haunt her life – moments of joy in the natural world counter-balanced with mental health issues in her city life, but it is in the thin places between that she finds solace. These places are borrowed from Irish mythology, and are moments that are liminal and often otherworldly. The pages ooze with honest, considered pain but also with a sunrise of hope constantly creeping over the horizon. I read the last 50 pages at a snail's pace, chewing every sentence before moving on. Wonderful.