4 out of 5 stars
The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
Family members can be really hard to read. They often deal with some injustice that the author wishes to set the record straight on, or they can be a whimsical recount of a particular episode and the memories and subsequent events that happened. And then you come across memoirs like this one that haven’t been written with a specific aim in mind. They contain and reveal so much about the joy and pain of life, love and family.
The first thing that Malaney did when taking his partner to the family home was to take her to the bog. It is not the smallest room in the house, but the bog that was past his grandparent’s house and over some very wet ground to the sheer wall of peat. It is not the most auspicious start, but it sets the tone of the book. The first chapter is about the sounds he hears when he is down there. Mostly, the sound of the wind, from the gentle breeze that barely can be heard to the howling gales that have come in from the Atlantic.
He begins to record there, taking his inspiration from Richard Skelton and Pat Collins and the way that they use sound in their art. Returning to Ireland after some time away he sees that his grandfather, John Joe is beginning to fade away. He starts to record his grandfather’s voice secretly. They are not high-quality recordings but they are what he will have to remember the sound of his voice.
He thinks that there must have been members of his family in the same spot for at least 200 years, but the written records are a little sketchy. The home he lived in and his grandparent’s house and land became the stamping ground with his brothers and cousins and the neighbour’s kids. It was a place that they could just be. They built huts, made music and became their own people. The family memories also draped over this landscape became part of his personal hinterland.
All of the chapters are like this; a sense of belonging to that place he grew up in regardless of where in the world he happens to be. He has chosen a career that is culturally rewarding, but sadly not financially so. His grandfather is admitted to hospital in Dublin and he is back in the country and gets to see him more often. He notes that he is fading away because of his dementia.
Some of these essays are fragmented, snatched as they float through his memories, and others are heartfelt, more considered pieces that he has taken a long time writing. I found this to be a very moving book. Not only is Maleney a quality writer, but he draws deeply from his emotions to convey all the feelings he has about life as he finds it.
He writes about this little patch of Ireland beautifully too, describing its bleakness in a beautiful, tender way.I found that the way he writes about death is not morbid:
‘Death was the removal of a person from the flow of time’
I had never thought about it in that way before, but it made complete sense.
If you want to read a different type of memoir, that might give you a different outlook on life after, then this is a great book to start with.
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