A ghost in the throat

Irish poet and essayist Ní Ghríofa makes her North American debut with a rich mixed-genre story of her quest to learn about the life of 18th-century poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonail, author of "Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire." When Doireann first comes across the poem, about a woman who finds her husband shot dead and drinks the blood pouring from his wound, in high school, it sticks in her head like lyrics from a pop song. Several refrains recur in Ní Ghríofa's narrative of her own life as a writer and middle-aged mother of four, including lines from the poem in her own translation, which she works on alongside her research of the poet's family history and fabrication of Ní Chonail's story, much of which is excised from the public record; snippets of U2's "With or Without You" ("and you give yourself away"), a song Doireann dislikes but which resonates with her daily routine of filling bottles with breast milk for her own children as well as those in need; and the interchangeable "This is a female text," which refers to this book, the "Caoineadh," and even stains of breast milk on a sheet. As Doireann discovers and reveals how she sees herself in the poem and Eibhlín in herself, she leads the reader through an intensely beautiful reckoning. This is a remarkable achievement. (June)

A fascinating hybrid work in which the voices of two Irish female poets ring out across centuries. "When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries," writes Ní Ghríofa in her first work of prose--and what a debut it is. Earning well-deserved accolades abroad, the book merges memoir, history, biography, autofiction, and literary analysis. "This is a female text," she writes, a deeply personal response to a renowned Irish "caoineadh," an elegy or keen, written in 1773 by grief-stricken noblewoman Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill after the shooting death of her husband. Exhausted from juggling housework, motherhood, and relocating, Ní Ghríofa turned repeatedly to a "scruffy photocopy of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, inviting the voice of another woman to haunt my throat a while." While taking care of her new baby, the author formed an intimate identification with Eibhlín Dubh, and "before long, the poem began to leak into my days." She wanted to learn more, "adding a brushstroke or two" to an intricately imagined portrait of her "growing in my mind." Ní Ghríofa tracked down translations of the poem and obscure biographical information. During her second pregnancy, the author embarked on her own translation, which she includes at the end of this captivating, timeless narrative. With her new baby in tow, she visited a monastery where "Eibhlín Dubh spoke her grief in their ruins." Anxious to learn about the "scattered jigsaw" of the poet's days, Ní Ghríofa undertook genealogical research and sought out family correspondence. Pondering "all the absent texts composed by women," the author got a tattoo, forever etching the poet's words into her skin. She also visited Derrynane, where Eibhlín Dubh wrote her lament. Although much of the poet's life remains hidden, she holds Ní Ghríofa "close as ink on paper and steady as a pulse." Lyrical prose passages and moving introspection abound in this unique and beautiful book. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The baby sleeps in a third-hand cot held together with black gaff tape, and the walls of our rented bedroom are decorated not with pastel murals, but with a constellation of black mould. I can never think of a lullaby, so I resort to tunes from teenage mixtapes instead. I used to rewind 'Karma Police' so obsessively that I wondered whether the brown spool might snap, but every time I pressed play the machine gave me the song again. Now, in my exhaustion, I return to that melody, humming it gently as the baby glugs from my breast. Once his jaw relaxes and his eyes roll back, I creep away, struck again by how often moments of my day are lived by countless other women in countless other rooms, through the shared text of our days. I wonder whether they love their drudge-work as I do, whether they take the same joy in slowly erasing a list like mine, filled with such simplicities as: School-run Mop Hoover Upstairs Pump Bins Dishwasher Laundry Clean Toilets Milk/Spinach/Chicken/Porridge School-run Bank + Playground Dinner Baths Bedtime I keep my list as close as my phone, and draw a deep sense of satis- faction each time I strike a task from it. In such erasure lies joy. No matter how much I give of myself to household chores, each of the rooms under my control swiftly unravels itself again in my aftermath, as though a shadow hand were already beginning the unwritten lists of my tomorrows: more tidying, more hoovering, more dusting, more wiping and mopping and polishing. When my husband is home, we divide the chores, but when I'm alone, I work alone. I don't tell him, but I prefer it that way. I like to be in control. Despite all the chores on my list, and despite my devotion to their completion, the house looks as cheerily dishevelled as any other home of young children, no cleaner, no dirtier. So far this morning, I have only crossed off school-run, a task which encompassed waking the children, dressing, washing, and feeding them, clearing the breakfast table, finding coats and hats and shoes, brushing teeth, shouting the word 'shoes' several times, filling a lunchbox, checking a schoolbag, shouting for shoes again, and then, finally, walking to the school and back. Since returning home, I have still only half-filled the dishwasher, half-helped my son with his jigsaw, and half-mopped the floor - nothing worthy of deletion from my list. I cling to my list because it is this list which holds my hand through my days, breaking the hours into a series of small, achievable tasks. By the end of a good list, when I am held again in my sleeping husband's arms, this text has become a sequence of scribbles, an obliteration which I observe in joy and satisfaction, because the gradual erasure of this handwritten document makes me feel as though I have achieved some- thing of worth in my hours. The list is both my map and my compass. Now I can feel myself starting to fall behind, so I skim the text of today's tasks to find my bearings, then set the dishwasher humming and draw a line through that word. I smile as I help the toddler find his missing jigsaw piece, clap when he completes it, and finally resort to the remote control. I don't cuddle him close as he watches The Octonauts. I don't sit on the sofa with him and close my weary eyes for ten minutes. Instead, I hurry to the kitchen, finish mopping, empty the bins, and then check those tasks off my list with a flourish. At the sink I scrub my hands, nails, and wrists, then scrub them again. I lift sections of funnels and filters from the steam sterilizer to assemble my breastpump. These machines are not cheap and I no longer have a paying job, so I bought mine second-hand. On my screen, the ad seemed almost as poignant as the baby shoes story usually attributed to Ernest Hemingway - Bought for e209, will sell for e45 ONO. Used once. Every morning for months this machine and I have followed the same small ritual in order to gather milk for the babies of strangers. I unclip my bra and scoop my breast into the funnel. It's always the right breast, because my left breast is a lazy bastard: by a month post-partum it has all but given up, so both baby and machine must be fully served by the right. I press the switch, wince as it jerks my nipple awkwardly, adjust myself, and then twist the dial that controls the intensity with which the machine pulls the flesh. At first, the mechanism draws fast and firm, mimicking the baby's pattern of quick suck, until it believes that the milk must have begun to emerge. After a moment or two the pump settles into a steady cadence: long tug, release, repeat. The sensation at nipple level is like a series of small shocks of static elec- tricity, or some strange complication of pins and needles. Unlike feeding the baby, this process always stings, it is never pleasant, and yet the discomfort is endurable. Eventually, the milk stirs to the machine's demands, un-gripping itself somewhere under my armpit. A drop falls from the nipple to be quickly sucked into the machine, then another, and another, until a little meniscus collects in the base of the bottle. I turn my gaze away. Excerpted from A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. 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