I Could Read The Sky

EXILE is not a wordIt is a soundThe rending of skinA fistful of clay on top of a coffinExile is not a wordIt is shaving againstA photograph not a mirrorExile is not a wordIt is hands joined in supplicationIn an empty cathedralIt is writing your own hagiographyIt is a continuing atrocityIt is the purgatorialTriumph of memory over topographyExile is not a wordExile is not a wordPeter Woods- - - - - - - - - - - - -This book is one of the most moving short novels I’ve ever read. How short is the n [...]

It’s a long long way from Clare to here.--Ralph McTellSometimes I hear the fiddles play, maybe it’s just a notionI dream I see white horses dance, on that other ocean.It’s a long way from Clare to here, it’s a long, long way from Clare to hereIt’s a long, long way, gets further by the day, it’s a long way from Clare to here.This song by Ralph McTell for me gets at the sad, sad beauty of this book and of the Irish emigrant story and maybe evoking the emigrant story generally, sung her [...]

This took me awhile to read for two reasons. The first is mundane: library on-hold books and group reads intruding. But this book is small, so I carried it with me to appointments, to read in waiting rooms, which, as it turned out, it was perfect for, which leads to my second reason: I read it like I do poetry, stopping after each mostly very short section, to savor and even reread some of the sentences.The narrative is lyrical, but the most impressive element to me was its masterful handling of [...]

The author, Timothy O'Grady, gathered testaments from many Irish emigrants, and combined the material into this novel, with photographs throughout by Steve Pyke. In the Preface John Berger calls it a bastard of a book, partly a joking allusion to O'Grady's acknowledgement to Berger's fathering the book through his collaboration with Jean Mohr. It's a bastard in another way.Berger begins, "I dare not go deeply into this book, for if I did, I would stay with it forever and I wouldn't return."I saw [...]

This is a spare novel about a spare way of life, Irish migrant workers in England. It's spare at 161 pages, and it's double-edged in that it's filled with 81 photos complementing the text. It's a brilliant elegiac combination. O'Grady's fictional voice beautifully describes the protagonist's experiences growing up in rural Ireland and his life working as a laborer in England. That voice is melancholic in reflecting on exile, solitude, and the loss of a world without ever writing about them as su [...]

The book is written the way memory works. Sometimes the narrator looks back to the past and sometimes he is there, in the past, telling us about events and people as if they’re happening now – he’s lost in his memories, or maybe that’s where he finds himself. As a result this is not a linear story. There are moments when it was completely unclear to me whether we were in the past or the present but overall that didn’t make a difference. While this book tells the story, as described in [...]

This cathartic, haunting, and beautifully photographed book is told from the point of view of an Irishman in England looking at mental snapshots of his life and the people and circumstances most influential to him.It is a series of vignettes, some funny, some desperate, about his life, and reads like a poetic road map chronicling the lives of the thousands who left Ireland to do industrial and farm labor in England in the 20th century.Absolutely heartbreaking.

Spawned a great film, and a greater soundtrack. O'Grady's previous book was decent, but in no way prepared me for this quantum leap. Old age, the exhaustion of an exiled life, and loss in stellar prose. Steve Pyke photos don't hurt either. Short, sweet, and sumptuous.

I'm disappointed by this. I didn't find the photographs added anything to a mediocre novel with characters I didn't care about. I wanted the photographs to add depth and make me wonder. Maybe it is partially relating to the print quality of the book itself?

I went back and started over reading this unique blend of fiction and black-and-white photography, not because of uncertainty or forgetfulness, but simply to experience again the full sweep of Irish youth in Labasheeda in County Clare to casual worker in the potato fields in England and on the building sites of London. Along the way the narrator finds loneliness and finally, all too briefly, love. Best read in one sitting.Halfway through the book the author tells us "What I could do. I could men [...]

The story is haphazard, as it is meant to be. The past and present interweave with each other freely - However, I feel it is distracting at times. It's almost like a puzzle we have to solve when working through the story, and the sentence structures are a bit hard to follow it's lyrical, nevertheless and you can almost feel the soul of the narrator.

I Could Read the Sky is a lyrical book, a poetic narrative, that speaks with a lilt and a song. The black and white photos capture the melancholy art and blend so fluidly with the text you will think you have imagined them.

Photos to perfectly accompany prose. O'G says things about women I've wanted to say just the way I've wanted to say them.

Absolutely beautiful.

lyrical, beautiful, moving