Book Review: Thin Places

An epistolary book review of Thin Places:

Dear Kerri,

Thank you for your book Thin Places.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for writing about language and place.

Thank you for describing grief.

Thank you for talking about history and politics.

Thank you for your affinity with moths.

Thank you for noticing.

Thank you for learning the words.

Thank you for piecing a past together.

Thank you for finding a way through.

Thanks for the education, and the poetry.

Thank you for sharing such a deep part of yourself.

Thank you for your compassion for the living.

Thank you for not being afraid of an empty page.

Thank you for making the journey.

Thank you for swimming in the sea.

Thank you for writing.

Love from Rachel

Residing, as I do, on the Isle of Iona, this book heightens an awareness of the sky, and the land, and their proximity. Just as the closeness of joy and despair tips from one to the other, and back, on the turn of the tide.

‘Thin places relax us, yes, but they also transform us — or, more accurately, unmask us. In thin places, we become our more essential selves.’ Eric Weiner gives his perspective on such places in the New York Times.

Thin Places, by Kerri ni Dochartaigh, is published by Canongate.

Hear her introducing her book, and reading from it.

Read her essay Unnameable Things – on Little Toller Books site.