Will I love A Ghost in the Throat?

I've never read anything like it, so breathtaking. It read like a poem and essay and literary narrative wrapped into one lyrical and sweeping memoir, with a side of history. One of the most magical things I've ever read.

This memoir pairs the writer's trials and joys of motherhood with her research into the Irish tradition of "keening," an oral literary form of verses created and handed down by women. "This is a female text," she writes early in the book, and then goes on to explore the implications of living with and embracing female texts, even as she tries to uncover details about the life of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, composer of a famous keen whose own history has all but been erased. This book is thoughtful and lyrical and even gripping, but what stayed with me most… show more.