Roise Rua
I came across Roise Rua in a small bookshop in Donegal,
Ireland. It was originally written in Gaelic by Padraig Ua Cnaimhsi and
was later translated into English by JJ Keaveny. It tells the story of a
woman, Roise, who was raised on the island of Arranmore, off the coast
north of Donegal.
Cnaimhsi spent many years interviewing Roise about her life on the island and used those interviews to put together the book, which is told from the first person perspective. The first two-thirds comprise an autobiography of Roise, and the last third is a collection of stories that either happened before her time or didn't fit into the main narrative.
It was definitely an interesting read. Roise's life was so unlike anything I have any experience with. She spent most of her young life as a migrant worker, working as either a servant on farms in Ireland or picking potatoes in Scotland. The money was sent back home to her mother until she finally decided to settle down and get married. The subsistence lifestyle is harder than most, especially on elderly people who largely have no support system. Towards the end of the book Roise laments the fact that they recently had to sell their cow, because she was too old to take care of it. But without the cow they lack a steady stream of milk.
The narrative was winding, and tended to ramble on and on. A lot of this is just the way people talk, especially, it seems, those who were brought up speaking Gaelic. The style of the book reminded me a lot of our tour guide on the Aran Islands. But it still got a bit tedious at times, when the narrator would seem to lose the thread of her story or get too far away from the original point to circle back to it in a natural way. For all that the author wanted to preserve Roise's voice, I think the book would have benefited from being edited a bit more and presented as a more traditional biography.
Cnaimhsi spent many years interviewing Roise about her life on the island and used those interviews to put together the book, which is told from the first person perspective. The first two-thirds comprise an autobiography of Roise, and the last third is a collection of stories that either happened before her time or didn't fit into the main narrative.
It was definitely an interesting read. Roise's life was so unlike anything I have any experience with. She spent most of her young life as a migrant worker, working as either a servant on farms in Ireland or picking potatoes in Scotland. The money was sent back home to her mother until she finally decided to settle down and get married. The subsistence lifestyle is harder than most, especially on elderly people who largely have no support system. Towards the end of the book Roise laments the fact that they recently had to sell their cow, because she was too old to take care of it. But without the cow they lack a steady stream of milk.
The narrative was winding, and tended to ramble on and on. A lot of this is just the way people talk, especially, it seems, those who were brought up speaking Gaelic. The style of the book reminded me a lot of our tour guide on the Aran Islands. But it still got a bit tedious at times, when the narrator would seem to lose the thread of her story or get too far away from the original point to circle back to it in a natural way. For all that the author wanted to preserve Roise's voice, I think the book would have benefited from being edited a bit more and presented as a more traditional biography.
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