Thin Places

January 10, 2022
In this nimble debut, Dochartaigh reflects on moving back to her native Ireland and the ways borders—constructed and natural, visible and unseen—shape life. Born in Derry in Northern Ireland during the Troubles in a divided household (her mother was Catholic, her father Protestant), the author vowed never to return after she moved “across the water” in her 20s in the mid-aughts. Yet 15 years later, Dochartaigh returned to find a nation fractured by Brexit (Derry, she writes, voted to remain). While reckoning with the unstable political landscape around her, Dochartaigh contends with another terrain: the “thin places” of refuge that she often finds in nature,where, according to Celtic mythology, heaven and earth are closer than usual. In writing that’s ethereal and elliptical, she laments Ireland’s collective “loss of connection with the natural world” and cleverly uses this “unwilding” as a warning about the threat of extinction faced by indigenous flora and fauna, and also as a lens through which to look at the toll of oppression and violence on humanity (“The echoes of the Troubles in Ireland have been, are being and will continue to be a coal-black crow that covers us with its wings”). By turns subtle and urgent, this offers a powerful and complex portrait of a land and its people.

Starred review from February 1, 2022
A luminous memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Born in 1983 (the "exact midway point" of the Troubles) in the border town of Derry, n� Dochartaigh was raised by a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. However, she writes, her family was "neither Protestant nor Catholic, and our parents had stayed together in a mixed marriage long enough to ensure that none of the essential parts of either of these camps could ever be instilled in us. At least not to the extent that we could claim either heritage." Throughout, the author recounts memories of a childhood consumed by loss and violence. With raw emotion, she describes many of the harrowing experiences, including being driven out of their home when a bomb was thrown through the window, moving frequently to avoid threats, and the murder of a dear friend. The author also explores the unsettling feeling of limbo that the Brexit vote has caused to resurface. In her attempt to come to terms with the effects of her tumultuous childhood, n� Dochartaigh writes poetically about her search for "thin places...places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds, beyond experience." Having left Ireland many years ago in an attempt to escape the pain, she describes the feeling of being called to return. "A call back to the land that made me, that wounded and broke me, the land that turned out to be the only place that held the power for me to heal," she writes. "A call back to places that I know my grandfather sought out, and maybe his grandfather before him, too." For the author, who has suffered from alcoholism, depression, and suicidal ideation, the wild places surrounding her hometown help release her anxieties and bring her unparalleled peace. They have become her thin places. A beautifully written tribute to the healing power of nature.

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March 1, 2022
"Where does the past cease?" n� Dochartaigh writes on the eve of Brexit in this deeply personal memoir that takes place amid a resurgence of division, violence, and uncertainty in Northern Ireland. Born in Derry to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, n� Dochartaigh experienced the brutality of the Troubles firsthand, witnessing the shooting of a British soldier, surviving a petrol bombing of her home, and navigating the political landscape of a divided city. Her traumatic childhood left her displaced, constantly occupying �iteanna tana� (thin places) between the worlds of peace and violence, joy and depression, silence and communication, and past and present. Woven throughout is the connection between the destruction of the natural world and the turmoil that has plagued the Irish border and her own growth, asking, "What effect does where you come from, and what that land has been through, have on the map of your self?" N� Dochartaigh's unique writing moves between a personal journey of healing, the fragility and importance of the environment, and a powerful call for peace.

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