"Wild Atlantic Women - Walking Ireland’s West Coast” by Gráinne Lyons is the April 2024 selection for the IrishCentral Book Club.
Each month, we will pick a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author and celebrate the amazing ability of the Irish to tell a good story for the IrishCentral Book Club.
"Wild Atlantic Women - Walking Ireland’s West Coast" was published by New Island Books in May 2023.
Publication Day! pic.twitter.com/evGZ8MCk5N
— Gráinne Lyons (@grainne_lyons) May 15, 2023
Synopsis of “Wild Atlantic Women - Walking Ireland’s West Coast”
At a crossroads in her life, Gráinne Lyons set out to travel Ireland’s west coast on foot. She set a simple intention: to walk in the footsteps of eleven pioneering Irish women deeply rooted in this coastal landscape and explore their lives and work along the way. As a Londoner born to Irish parents, she also sought answers in her own identity.
As Gráinne heads north from Cape Clear Island where her great-grandmother was a lacemaker, she considers Ellen Hutchins, Maude Delap, Edna O’Brien, Granuaile, and Queen Maeve among others from her unique perspective. Their homes – in places that are famously wild and remote – are transformed into sites of hope, purpose, opportunity and inspiration. Walking through this history, her journey reveals unexpected insight into emigrant identity, travelling alone, femininity and the trappings of an ‘ideal’ life.
Against the backdrop and power of this great ocean, "Wild Atlantic Women" will inspire the 21st-century reader and walker to keep going, regardless of the path.
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Reviews for “Wild Atlantic Women - Walking Ireland’s West Coast”
"Wild Atlantic Women is a different, deeper narrative that gradually soaks into your consciousness, like soft rain soaks into way onto your skin in the remote coastal locations that Lyons visits. Lyon’s understated, luminous writing does justice to these diverse women who all shared this wild coastline." — Sunday Business Post
"Although Lyons concentrates on her subjects, many of whom were from remote communities, like the best travel narratives there is an inner and outer journey as she reaches a crossroads in her own life." - The Irish Times
About Gráinne Lyons
Gráinne Lyons is a writer and documentary-maker from London, where she lives. She holds an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmith’s University and a BA in English Literature from the University of York. Her work has been published in The Irish Times and Aesthetica magazine and she was shortlisted for the Mslexia first novel competition in 2017. As a documentary producer, she has produced numerous arts and history films. Gráinne’s family live in her father’s home place of Co Sligo, where she lives when she’s not in London.
(Synopsis, reviews, and biographical information from New Island Books.)
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