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Cacophony of Bone

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Cacophony of Bone

By: Kerri ni Dochartaigh
Narrated by: Kerri ni Dochartaigh
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About this listen

Two days after the Winter Solstice in 2019 Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to stay put. What followed was a year of many changes. The pandemic arrived and their isolated home became a place of enforced isolation. It was to be a year unlike any we had seen before. But the seasons still turned, the swallows came at their allotted time, the rhythms of the natural world went on unchecked. For Kerri there was to be one more change, a longed-for but unhoped for change. Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of a year – a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life – from one winter to the next. It is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world – and it is about all that does not change. All that which simply keeps on – living and breathing, nesting and dying – in spite of it all. When the pandemic came time seemed to shapeshift, so this is also a book about time. It is, too, a book about home, and what that can mean. Fragmentary in subject and form, fluid of language, this is an ode to a year, a place, and a love, that changed a life.

©2023 Kerri ni Dochartaigh (P)2023 Canongate Books Nature & Ecology Science Natural History Winter

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Critic reviews

I am a little in awe of Kerri ni Dochartaigh's work - the clarity and disinhibition of her storytelling; the wild freedom of her prose. Here is a brave and bold book, and one that deserves to be read, then read again (HELEN JUKES)
Kerri ni Dochartaigh is something of a modern-day mystic, a writer of acute sensitivity and wonder. There is such beauty, such pain, such rawness in this diary of an extraordinary year - you read it feeling quickened, awakened - that you, too, are missing a layer of skin. It's a very special book indeed (LUCY CALDWELL)
This is a brilliant second book from a unique and deeply gifted writer who constantly renews our sense of the natural world and the landscape of the heart (KEVIN BARRY)
All stars
Most relevant  
In recent times there have been some great books, this one is one of the best.

Wonderful

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This memoir totally absorbing. Hearing the words read by the author made the exquisite language even more impactful. Language really doesn’t do enough to describe the depth of this memoir. I felt every word, and this feeling will linger and live within me. My life feels enriched having read this and I can’t wait to follow Kerri’s career. If you enjoy absorbing, poetic, and embodied writing please read this!!

I’m so glad I went to the audiobook first

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A dreamy and poetic meditation on home, love, time, motherhood, personal resilience set against the backdrop of the pandemic in rural Ireland. Beautifully read.

Dreamy and poetic

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In every exhale, there lives a 1000 memories. The substance that takes up space there is guided by grief, longing, loss, pleasure, wisdom, meaning, connection and loneliness. This writer asks us to come into her living memories over a 12 month navigation of the year the world changed and how it transformed her. I held every thought and sentence dearly. It brought colour back into a time where everything felt thick and grey.

Reflective prose that digests a year

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A book unlike any other I have read. A flowing blend of memoir and nature writing that, at times left me breathless.
The author herself narrated it which was another layer of meaning in itself. The distinctive vowel sounds of her Derry accent was a constant reminder of what she had lived through, but the sounds themselves were rare and beautiful.
Just wondrous.

A wondrous experience

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