Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021
A breathtaking mix of memoir,nature writing and history: this is Kerri ni Dochartaigh's story of a wild Ireland,an invisible border,an old conflict and the healing power of the natural world
Kerri ni Dochartaigh was born in Derry,on the border of the North and South of Ireland,at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town. But for her family,and many others,there was no right side. One parent was Catholic,the other was Protestant. In the space of one year they were forced out of two homes and when she was eleven a homemade petrol bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city,and for families like Kerri's,the ones who fell between the cracks of identity,it seemed there was no escape.
In Thin Places, a mixture of memoir,history and nature writing,Kerri explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal,how violence and poverty are never more than a stone's throw from beauty and hope,and how we are,once again,allowing our borders to become hard,and terror to creep back in. Kerri asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study,and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours but,at the same time,it never really was.
Publisher: Canongate BooksISBN: 9781786899644Number of pages: 272Weight: 195 gDimensions: 198 x 130 x 17 mmEdition: Main
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A remarkable piece of writing. I don't think I've ever read a book as open-hearted as this. It resists easy pieties of nature as a healing force,but nevertheless charts a recovery which could never have been achieved without landscape,wild creatures and "thin places". It is also flocked with luminous details (moths,birds,feathers,skulls,moving water). Kerri's voice is utterly her own,rich and strange. I've folded down the corners of many pages,marking sentences and moments that glitter out at me. Wow'- Robert Macfarlane
'Powerful,unflinching...Part hymn to nature,part Troubles memoir...Vividly descriptive...Thin Places is at heart a survivor's story located in the real and brutally Darwinian world of lived experience'- The Guardian
'What was Kerri ni Dochartaigh's burden as a child - to exist in "the gaps between" the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland - has become her gift as a writer. She is sensitive to the legacies of loss and trauma and highly attuned to the gifts of the natural world and the possibilities of place. This is a special,beautiful,many-faceted book'- Amy Liptrot
'An eloquent,moving work of politics,geography and the self. Full of wisdom and deeply engaging'- Sinead Gleeson
Ni Dochartaigh's delight in wild things weaves a thread of light through her childhood,adulthood and the book itself...Acutely personal...Wonderfully evocative...This heartfelt memoir,with its message on the saving grace of nature,may speak to an even wider audience than it first imagined'- The Daily Mail
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