Sinéad Gleeson
Auteur de Constellations: Reflections From Life
A propos de l'auteur
Œuvres de Sinéad Gleeson
The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers (2015) — Directeur de publication — 57 exemplaires
Silver Threads of Hope: Short Stories in Aid of Console (2012) — Directeur de publication — 15 exemplaires
The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland (2016) — Directeur de publication — 15 exemplaires
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Gleeson, Sinéad
- Sexe
- female
- Nationalité
- Ireland
Membres
Critiques
‘’That night, I walked the streets of East Belfast again in my dreams. Waking, the dream seemed to linger far longer than a mere dream. These streets are ours. I was jittery all day, a restless, nauseous, over-caffeinated feeling. I could email her, I thought, through the website. I wouldn’t bother with pleasantries or preliminaries. I’d just say, ‘There we were. Do you remember?’’
The poignancy, richness and diversity of Irish Literature within a volume, beautifully selected by Sinead Gleeson. From the haunting to the satirical, the romantic, the tragic. Snippets of the woes and joys of the farmers’ lives, the complexities of urban landscapes, the sorrows of the heart, the terrors of the mind, and the irrevocable wounds of the Troubles that shaped the soul of the Northern Irish. A collection to be cherished.
Do you recall the feeling of being alone in your room, reading while the soft light of the sun enters from the window on a late summer afternoon? The silence and the calm? This collection reminded me of those precious moments.
My favourite stories include:
The Quest by Leland Bardwell: A woman travels to England to meet the son she gave up for adoption 40 years ago.
Over and Done With by Claire-Louise Bennett: A woman who lives alone tries to cope with the demanding atmosphere of Christmas.
Ann Lee’s by Elizabeth Bowen: A mysterious visitor creates mischief in the shop of a formidable lady.
Here We Are by Lucy Caldwell: A beautifully atmospheric coming-of-age story about love, death and summer holidays, set in East Belfast.
The Yew Tree by Oein DeBhairduin: A folk tale of loss and grief, true to the haunting Irish nature.
The Pram by Roddy Doyle: A terrifying ghost story that combines the finest features of the Irish legends and Slavic traditions. Brilliant!
Virgin Soil by George Egerton: A daughter who had to put up with a violent husband, escapes the nightmare of her wedding and rebels against her naive, oppressive mother.
A Love by Neil Jordan: A moving love affair, set in Dublin and Limerick.
Antarctica by Claire Keegan: The only story by Keegan that I actually enjoyed. A sensual tale that turns into a nightmare.
Hunger by Louise Kennedy: A hymn to Bobby Sands through the eyes of an adolescent girl that has found herself in the wolf’s den.
Walking the Dog by Brendan MacLaverty: A man finds himself threatened by both sides that claim to ‘’fight’’ the absurd war of the Troubles.
A Shiver of Hearts by Una Mannion: A statue of the Virgin Mary becomes the heart of a young girl’s story.
A Journey by Edna O’Brien: As with Keegan this is the only O’Brien story that managed to attract my attention, narrating a doomed love affair.
Black Spot by Deidre Sullivan: If you are a teacher you cannot help but adore this tender and moving story.… (plus d'informations)
The poignancy, richness and diversity of Irish Literature within a volume, beautifully selected by Sinead Gleeson. From the haunting to the satirical, the romantic, the tragic. Snippets of the woes and joys of the farmers’ lives, the complexities of urban landscapes, the sorrows of the heart, the terrors of the mind, and the irrevocable wounds of the Troubles that shaped the soul of the Northern Irish. A collection to be cherished.
Do you recall the feeling of being alone in your room, reading while the soft light of the sun enters from the window on a late summer afternoon? The silence and the calm? This collection reminded me of those precious moments.
My favourite stories include:
The Quest by Leland Bardwell: A woman travels to England to meet the son she gave up for adoption 40 years ago.
Over and Done With by Claire-Louise Bennett: A woman who lives alone tries to cope with the demanding atmosphere of Christmas.
Ann Lee’s by Elizabeth Bowen: A mysterious visitor creates mischief in the shop of a formidable lady.
Here We Are by Lucy Caldwell: A beautifully atmospheric coming-of-age story about love, death and summer holidays, set in East Belfast.
The Yew Tree by Oein DeBhairduin: A folk tale of loss and grief, true to the haunting Irish nature.
The Pram by Roddy Doyle: A terrifying ghost story that combines the finest features of the Irish legends and Slavic traditions. Brilliant!
Virgin Soil by George Egerton: A daughter who had to put up with a violent husband, escapes the nightmare of her wedding and rebels against her naive, oppressive mother.
A Love by Neil Jordan: A moving love affair, set in Dublin and Limerick.
Antarctica by Claire Keegan: The only story by Keegan that I actually enjoyed. A sensual tale that turns into a nightmare.
Hunger by Louise Kennedy: A hymn to Bobby Sands through the eyes of an adolescent girl that has found herself in the wolf’s den.
Walking the Dog by Brendan MacLaverty: A man finds himself threatened by both sides that claim to ‘’fight’’ the absurd war of the Troubles.
A Shiver of Hearts by Una Mannion: A statue of the Virgin Mary becomes the heart of a young girl’s story.
A Journey by Edna O’Brien: As with Keegan this is the only O’Brien story that managed to attract my attention, narrating a doomed love affair.
Black Spot by Deidre Sullivan: If you are a teacher you cannot help but adore this tender and moving story.… (plus d'informations)
This book is fully of essays that are so well written. I think every Irish woman should read this.
Sinéad Gleeson’s memoir Constellations explores the relationship between our bodies and our identity. In a series of linked essays, she writes powerfully about her own experiences and what they tell us about the embodied lives of all women, particularly Irish women.
Gleeson has been doubly unlucky. As an adolescent she had a form of arthritis which meant painful surgery and using crutches (and sometimes a wheelchair) just at the age when people are most self-conscious about their body, and most eager to join in with friends. Later, just months after marrying, she was diagnosed with leukaemia.
I found the essays about illness to be particularly moving. The writing is lyrical and visceral and without self-pity. She captures the loss of autonomy, the battles with professionals to be heard, the detachment from the everyday world, the strange acoustics and enforced intimacies of hospital life.
She considers the relationship between women and fertility, linking her own hopes and fears about being able to have children, with the way women are defined by their role as mothers. She broadens this to consider the struggle for Irish women to have legal access to abortion, and the injustices of the past when women were institutionalised for becoming pregnant outside marriage.
She explores the other ways women have been confined, contrasting her own experiences of freedom to travel and to be educated with the poverty and limited horizons of her grandmother’s generation. She argues that the visions for which her grandmother was famous might have been a reaction to this confinement, a way to envisage a bigger, stranger universe.
What Constellations brought home to me is how serious illness sets someone apart. It is more than the absence of health, experiences missed, it is a whole other state of being, of loneliness and pain and otherness. Worse, it is a state that many medical professionals (especially if the doctor is a man, and the patient is a woman) still dismiss.
Constellations gives a vivid and vital insight into living with illness and how the bodies we inhabit make us who we are.
*
I received a copy of Constellations from the publisher via Netgalley.
Read more of my reviews on my blog katevane.com/blog… (plus d'informations)
Gleeson has been doubly unlucky. As an adolescent she had a form of arthritis which meant painful surgery and using crutches (and sometimes a wheelchair) just at the age when people are most self-conscious about their body, and most eager to join in with friends. Later, just months after marrying, she was diagnosed with leukaemia.
I found the essays about illness to be particularly moving. The writing is lyrical and visceral and without self-pity. She captures the loss of autonomy, the battles with professionals to be heard, the detachment from the everyday world, the strange acoustics and enforced intimacies of hospital life.
She considers the relationship between women and fertility, linking her own hopes and fears about being able to have children, with the way women are defined by their role as mothers. She broadens this to consider the struggle for Irish women to have legal access to abortion, and the injustices of the past when women were institutionalised for becoming pregnant outside marriage.
She explores the other ways women have been confined, contrasting her own experiences of freedom to travel and to be educated with the poverty and limited horizons of her grandmother’s generation. She argues that the visions for which her grandmother was famous might have been a reaction to this confinement, a way to envisage a bigger, stranger universe.
What Constellations brought home to me is how serious illness sets someone apart. It is more than the absence of health, experiences missed, it is a whole other state of being, of loneliness and pain and otherness. Worse, it is a state that many medical professionals (especially if the doctor is a man, and the patient is a woman) still dismiss.
Constellations gives a vivid and vital insight into living with illness and how the bodies we inhabit make us who we are.
*
I received a copy of Constellations from the publisher via Netgalley.
Read more of my reviews on my blog katevane.com/blog… (plus d'informations)
Listes
Prix et récompenses
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Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 7
- Aussi par
- 3
- Membres
- 237
- Popularité
- #95,614
- Évaluation
- 4.1
- Critiques
- 5
- ISBN
- 25
- Langues
- 2
Gleeson ken ik van het boeiende boek This woman’s work, dat ze samen met Kim Gordon schreef. Omdat ik dat zo goed geschreven vond wou ik ook Hemellichamen lezen. De prachtige cover en het thema (Spiegelingen uit het leven) speelden ook een rol. Uitgeverij HetMoet lijkt wel een patent te hebben op prachtige covers en uitgaves…
Hemellichamen is een boek om traag te lezen: je wil niets missen en je hebt tijd nodig om veel te onderlijnen. Hoewel Sinéads leven ver van mij afstaat (qua moederschap en ziekteverleden) voelde ik toch veel verwantschap.
Niet elke essay of gedicht raakte me even diep. Een wond straalt licht uit én Het avonturenverhaal sprongen er voor mij echt uit, maar dat is natuurlijk persoonlijke smaak.
Ierland is een speciaal geval (eufemistisch uitgedrukt) qua vrouwenrechten en dat speelt een belangrijke rol in veel van de essays. Soms vroeg ik me af of Gleeson de vrouw/schrijver zou zijn geweest die ze nu is als ze niet zo lang ziek was en/of ergens anders geboren was. Er moet toch iets in het Ierse water zitten want zo veel geweldige schrijvers, acteurs komen van daar…
Het persoonlijke is politiek én omgekeerd. Gleeson schrijft schijnbaar nonchalant: met het grootste gemak raakt zij alle aspecten van het leven van een vrouw, vrouwen van vroeger en nu, in Ierland en wereldwijd, lichamelijk én geestelijk. En hoewel het heel persoonlijk is wordt het nergens pathetisch.
Sinead Gleeson schreef een intelligent, moedig, eerlijk en intiem boek dat je hoofd, hart én buik raakt. Een mooi boek; letterlijk én figuurlijk.… (plus d'informations)