patlo's Reviews (1.32k)

Incredibly well researched and well told story of rewilding and reforestation in the southern coast of Ireland. I have followed the author on social media for several years and meant to get around to reading this book, and it was very worthwhile to do so. It’s not just a memoir and it’s not just specific to the Beara Peninsula near Cork, but there are things to be learned about the environment and restoration everywhere here. A person could spend a long time in the footnotes.

Highly recommend reading this book, and even more highly recommend following Eoghan Daltun on social media.

I really enjoyed the audiobook version of this story. Main character Majella lives with her alcoholic mother and disappeared dad in post-Troubles Northern Ireland. She's coded as autistic and the reader roots for her small everyday victories - buying a new duvet is a huge moment worthy of celebration. While the book opens with Majella's grandmother having been murdered, and while Majella's grief is a feature of the story, the main story is Majella's interaction with the characters in her small town.. and how she learns to grow with and in spite of them. 

The book's NOT dark, but it could have been; it's funny, and VERY Northern Irish - witty, dry, sharp, and you'll learn a new word or ten if that's not your lingo. 

Similar to How to Build a Boat in how it features a character coded as autistic, but without that being a centerpiece.. but Majella's an older, wiser, more integrated character. Lovable and in a different way.

This allegory of the fall of British rule in Ireland's War of Independance in the 19-teens was an odd, engaging, frustrating book. It has echoes The Master and Margrita in its "literature-ness", dark humor, absurdism, and historical touch points. There's a lot happening that I knew *means* something, but I'm not sure what - not knowing nuances of the Irish revolution post-1916. I'll have to go read a deep dive on this book now. But as "literature", it's an interesting, weird, slow, yet engaging story.

This book is really hard to review. I think I just wasn’t in the mood for it. It’s witty, provocative. It’s also rambling and disjointed. 

I think this reflects more my experience reading it than the writer, but I found myself skimming a lot, looking for something to latch onto. 

So at the same time, it’s well written and unique, as well as something I didn’t enjoy reading that much.

I’m going to put my copy in the closest little free library and I imagine the next person that finds and reads this will be thrilled. 

3.5 stars. A good memoir by one of the leading voices in discovering the interconnectedness of trees and forests. This book is a bit slow and ponderous, but it’s a good tale, well told.

This is a stunning memoir about being an adoptee of mixed race, not knowing your birth mother or father, family secrets, and the complexity of love and family.  As an adoptive dad, I loved and was pierced by Ito's story. I'll remember this one for a long, long time.