A Ghost in the Throat

By: Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Narrated by: Siobhán McSweeney

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.

On discovering her murdered husband's body, an 18th-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's poem travels through the centuries, finding its way to a new mother who has narrowly avoided her own fatal tragedy. When she realizes that the literature dedicated to the poem reduces Eibhlin Dubh's life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poet's girlhood and old age; her unique rages, joys, sorrows, and desires; the shape of her days and site of her final place of rest. What follows is an adventure in which Doireann Ni Ghriofa sets out to discover Eibhlin Dubh's erased life - and in doing so, discovers her own.

Moving fluidly between past and present, quest and elegy, poetry and those who make it, A Ghost in the Throat is a shape-shifting book: a record of literary obsession; a narrative about the erasure of a people, of a language, of women; a meditation on motherhood and on translation; and an unforgettable story about finding your voice by freeing another's.

©2020 Doireann Ní Ghríofa (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

legacy and lineage

A stunning portrait of motherhood and devotion.
This is a must read for any parent!

Stunning

Brilliant and poetic, both in the language choices and overall structure. Absolutely riveting. Wonderful performance too.

Hauntingly Beautiful

’This is a female text borne of guilt and desire, stitched to a soundtrack of cartoon nursery rhymes.’
‘This is a female text and it is a tiny miracle that it even exists, as it does in this moment, lifted to another consciousness by the ordinary wonder of type. Ordinary, too, the ricochet of thought that swoops, now, from my body to yours.’
‘This is a female text, written in the twenty-first century. How late it is. How much has changed. How little.’
‘This is a female text, which is also a caoineadh: a dirge and a drudge-song, an anthem of praise, a chant and a keen, a lament and an echo, a chorus and a hymn. Join in.’

’When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.
Look: I am eleven, a girl who is terrible at sums and at sports, a girl given to staring out windows, a girl whose only real gift lies in daydreaming.’

Her teacher is the one who introduces her to this woman, who makes the story of this woman come alive, a woman who experienced the loss of a love in 1773. A woman who goes to his side, and kneeling over him, her voice ’rising in an antique formula of breath and syllable… a ‘caoineadh’, a keen to lament and honour the dead. Her voice generates an echo strong enough to reach a girl in the distance with dark hair and bitten nails. Me.’ The woman was Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill, one of the last noblewomen of the old ways, the old Irish order, and a poet.

Recalling these days in the past as a woman now with a husband and children, her days filled with the routines of motherhood, and all that it entails. The early years of marriage and motherhood float through her mind, the good and the bad. Run-down apartments they lived in with faucets that dropped nonstop, rats, a tiny yard, but also the nights when she would wake to nurse her first son, and then her second, watching the moon through the church spires. It was there she wrote a poem, and then another, and then a book. Love poems that spoke of the rain and of flowers.

’As he dreamt, I watched poems hurrying towards me through the dark. The city had lit something in me, something that pulsed, vulnerable as a fontanelle, something that trembled, as I did, between bliss and exhaustion.’

Knowing they need to move again, she’s driving in search of a new place when she sees a sign for Kilcrea, and searches her mind for the significance it seems to have in her memory. When she realizes it is where the poet buried her lover, memories come rushing back to her, sending her down a chain of memories that leave her wondering where the girl she’d been had gone.

This is how this begins, but there’s so much more to her story that is about love and sacrifice, marriage, children and family, re-discovering oneself, passion, life, and more.

It’s rare that I read and listen to a book simultaneously, but I’m so glad that I did with this one. Listening to this was so incredibly lovely, beautifully narrated by Siobhán McSweeney, but I was glad I had the book, as well, so I could highlight passages.

Hauntingly beautiful.

Wow!

2nd read - listening was beautiful! It is a treat to hear Irish - and Siobhan McSweeney’s voice is gorgeous.

Such unexpected loveliness

What a delight… a meditation on motherhood, with lyric and history and genealogy and bees… a woman’s journey to discover herself through the erasure of women in history. Just glorious.
And the narration - I will listen again and again for that alone.

absolutely stunning

what a sonic masterpiece. pleasing. easing neatly between sheets of need. seize me,seize me. free.

Captivating

This is a glorious book and a wonderful reading performance. Unlike anything I’ve ever read in its blend of poetry, memoir, and biography. The author follows an earlier women writer’s life as we follow her own, theirs together. She couldn’t have imagined that her own readers would become as captivated. Otherworldly and an incredible achievement.

Beautiful words

I’m not surprised she’s a poet, her use of words is so lovely. She has such passion for motherhood and the female spirit, it’s contagious.

so overwrought!

there was see nice poetic imagery in this book, but it was way too maudlin, and the narrator of it only exaggerated that. Story was a bit thin.

Re "Tediously self-absorbed" review

There is a typo that needs correcting in this review I just submitted titled "tediously self- absorbed."
It should be "Hamnet" not "Hamlit" as written. I don't know how else to get it corrected other than bringing it to your attention. Thanks!