Sinéad Gleeson

by

Hagstone by Sinead Gleeson

I was intrigued to read this debut novel Hagstone having enjoyed Sinéad Gleeson’s voice in her nonfiction narrative essay collection Constellations (reviewed here).

Island Culture and Art

On a wild and rugged island, artist Nell feels at home. It is the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in the landscape, local superstitions and the feminine.

The island has a way of tethering people to the soil, despite high watermarks of loss. Even when people leave, stories survive.

The mysterious Inions, a commune of women who have travelled there from all over the world, consider it a place of refuge and safety, of solace in nature. They have barely any contact with anyone outside of the convent where they reside.

wild woman Island literature Irish commune of women refuge in nature waves crash on rocks silhouette of a woman standing on a rock pink sky birds circling

Hagstone centres around the life of Nell, living alone in a cottage on the island (putting me in mind of Sophie White’s Where I End) where she tries to eek out a living doing tours of the island and changeovers in holiday rentals, to support her preferred activity, making ‘durational art’.

Up on a hill lies an old convent named Rathglas, inhabited by the group of women (not nuns, though they live in a very nun-like fashion) who have opted out of society, headed by a woman they refer to as Maman.

Given its gynocratic nature, Rathglas attracted activists and agitators, though you couldn’t help but wonder if some were drawn there by the sound.

A clever use of the French word for Mother and the title of French artist Louise Bourgeois’s most famous sculpture, an enormous bronze, stainless steel, and marble sculpture of a spider, found in several locations, representative of the protective and nurturing nature of her mother.

A Commission For Samhain, Rogue Elements

Louise Bourgeois art installation Maman, A Crouching Spider in an infinity pool reflected in the water Chateau La Coste Puy Sainte Reparade near Aix en Provence

One day Nell receives a letter, an invitation to create an artwork for the thirtieth anniversary since the Inions arrived, to coincide with the festival of Samhain.

Then there is Cleary, a man recently returned to the island, a subject of intrigue and attraction, the two of them seeking to fill some void, craving each other’s company while avoiding attachment.

And the rich actor, Nick, a man everyone recognises but no one knows. Nell takes him on a tour and his inquisitive questioning unsettles her.

Haunting Sounds That Not All Can Hear

Photo by Oliver S. Pexels.com

There is a strange sound that emits from the island, that only women can hear and not only hear, but it has a strange effect on them. Birds fall out of the sky.

It was impossible to exactly predict the arrival of the sound. The canonball rumble of it. It paid no heed to scientific forecasts.Storm warnings in traffic light colours. Some felt it in advance, like a tingle on the skin. Others said the air felt heavier. Last night it arrived along with a new moon. The result was something never seen before.

I never quite understood what this was, was it an element of magic realism or something else. It was one of the threads left to the reader’s imagination, a missed opportunity or perhaps I missed something?

It all leads up to the night of Samhain, after which nothing will be the same.

Hagstone started out really well and drew me in and had a strong first half, introducing the different characters, elements of intrigue and clever satirical humour, that wasn’t sustained in the latter half where it lost opportunities to delve deeper into the intentions behind some of its characters and tie up some unfinished threads.

– A hagstone – I have a thing for them! Thank you.

– For years I just thought they were battered stones with holes in them, until Sile set me right. About the fact they’re lucky, and fishermen tie them to their boats to ward off evil.

– And that if you look through the hole, you’re meant to see a different view of the world. I think that’s why I collect them.Looking, seeing, an artist thing.

Further Reading

The Guardian: Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson review – portrait of an artist by Jessie Greengrass

Author, Sinéad Gleeson

Sinéad Gleeson is an Irish author and artist.

Her essay collection, Constellations: Reflections from Life, won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Michel Déon Prize.

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Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson

Reflections From Life

constellations-sinead-gleesonAn excellent collection of essays, of life writing with a particular connection to the body and how women negotiate life when part(s) of it malform and interrupt the ordinary course of a life, making it something extraordinary.

Extraordinary it is, that Gleeson went through all she has until now and managed to create a family and birth this wonderful book, not to mention curating The Glass Shore and The Long Gaze Back, two anthologies that celebrate Irish women writers.

Just as the cover displays the image of a body with numbered sections, inside the book the chapters are labelled with small diagrams that represent a key to the constellations, adding another layer of metaphor and meaning for the reader to ponder.

The Many Diagnoses and A Commitment

As a young girl, the author was diagnosed with monoarticular arthritis, rare to discover in a young person, it would mark the beginning of a lifetime of interventions, all of which might have had more devastating consequences, but Gleeson possesses a remarkable ability to rally, recover and live life on her own terms, despite the heavy price her body puts upon her.

The essays share the struggles, the shame, the hopes and disappointments, of bones, of blood, of hair, of children, of grief, of witness to a deteriorating mind, the many varied experiences that might represent weakness in the body, however they have all contributed to creating and moulding a psyche of great strength and perseverance. An activist. A voice. A woman standing in the light, seen, heard, inspiring.

On the night of her leukemia diagnosis, not being able to face telling her parents she asked the nurse to break the news and then prepared herself to see them.

“I will never forget their faces, their incomprehension and tears. Amid all the wrongness of that moment, I knew something was required of me. To hide my fear and offer them a glimpse of a future none of us knew had any certainty. I have no memory of this but my mother told me years later that I looked into her face and said, ‘I’m not going to die, I’m going to write a book.’ To commit to writing, or art, is to commit to living. A self imposed deadline as a means of continued existence. It has taken me a long time to write that book and here I am, so very far from that awful night.”

A Wound Gives Off Its Own Light

The essay I found the most moving comes near the end is named after an Anne Carson poem ‘ A Wound Gives Off Its Own Light’ which explores the relationship with art and creativity as a way to channel or express what is being felt. She is moved by the work and motivations of Frida Kahlo, Jo Spence, Lucy Grealy.

“Kahlo, Grealy and Spence were lights in the dark for me, a form of guidance. A triangular constellation. To me, they showed that it was possible to live a parallel creative life, one that overshadows the patient life, nudging it off centre stage…That in taking all the pieces of the self, fractured by surgery, there is a rearrangement: making wounds the source of inspiration, not the end of it.”

Art Creativity The Body Compromised.jpg

The Body Compromised by Allia Jen Yousef (2001-2019)

Spence’s medium was photography; an ageing, sick, working class woman, she sought representation, visibility, her series Phototherapy, focused on the intersection between arts, health and well-being, combining comic and feminist ideas, outward expressions to promote inner healing or peace, disruptive to the viewer, soothing to the artist.

“Representing a diagnosis – in art, words or photos – is an attempt to explain to ourselves what has happened, to deconstruct the world and rebuild it in our way. Perhaps articulating a life-changing illness is part of recovery. But so is finding the kind of articulation that is personal to you.”

I was reminded while reading of Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am memoir that I read in January, it similarly tracks events (seventeen brushes with death) and turning points in a life that invite pause and reflection, some more dramatic than others.

I read Constellations as part of #ReadingIrelandMonth21. Have you read any good Irish non fiction this month?

Sinéad Gleeson

A writer of essays, criticism and fiction, her writings have appeared in Granta, Winter Papers and Gorse. Constellations won Non Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2019.

Further Reading Irish Nonfiction

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriofa

Handiwork by Sara Baume

An Affair With My Mother by Catriona Palmer