Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

A ghost in the throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa

eng

no index present

non fiction

A ghost in the throat

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

A kaleidoscopic blend of memoir, autofiction, and essays in which Doireann Ní Ghríofa explores inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart. In the eighteenth century, on discovering her husband has been murdered, an Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament that reaches across centuries to the young Doireann Ní Ghríofa, whose fascination with it is later rekindled when she narrowly avoids fatal tragedy in her own life and becomes obsessed with learning everything she can about the poem Peter Levi has famously called "the greatest poem written in either Ireland or Britain" during its era. A Ghost in the Throat moves fluidly between past and present, quest and elegy, poetry and the people who make it

adult