Constellations
Reflections From Life
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
*Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020*
*Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*
An extraordinarily intimate book of essays that chart the experiences that have made Sinéad Gleeson the woman and the writer she is today, for readers of The Last Act of Love and I Am, I Am, I Am.
'Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read.' – Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.
I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles.
How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? How do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In the powerful and daring essays in Constellations Sinéad Gleeson does that very thing. All of life is within these pages, from birth to first love, pregnancy to motherhood, terrifying sickness, old age and loss to death itself.
Throughout this wide-ranging collection she also turns her restless eye outwards delving into work, art and our very ways of seeing. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, and yet still in her own spirited, generous voice, Sinéad takes us on a journey that is both uniquely personal and yet universal in its resonance. Here is the fierce joy and pain of being alive.
'Breathtaking and sublime.' – Nina Stibbe
'Absolutely extraordinary and life-enhancing.' – Daisy Buchanan, author of How to be Grown-up.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This stirring collection of personal essays from Irish radio broadcaster Gleeson effortlessly renders pain, both physical and emotional, into prose. Her teenage struggle with chronic arthritis takes place in hospitals, where she undergoes multiple hip surgeries, but also against the backdrop of her Catholic upbringing. On a school trip to Lourdes, a site traditionally ascribed miraculous healing properties, her faith is shaken when she discovers "nothing felt different." Her "troubled orthopaedic history" foreshadowed the leukemia that arrived decades later, "an odd osseous connection," and both complicated pregnancy years after that. "I am an accumulation of all of those sleepless nights and hospital days," she writes, "of the raw keel of boredom and self-consciousness illness is." She draws in references to music, literature, and visual art she feels a deep connection to Frida Kahlo, whose "compromised body conspired against her, denying her not just health but the chance of motherhood" and eloquently explores how "the sick body has its own narrative impulse." While "in illness it is hard to find the right words," Gleeson's strong work shows it is worth the effort to search for them.
