A bland though beautifully written story about one poet's obsession with another. The line 'this is a female text' is one of the best in the book, but it's a very facile and exclusionary one. Ni Ghriofa's females are the selfless, maternal, earth mothers; the madonnas, the caregiving guardians of the human race, producers and protectors of children, all breasts and domesticity. For a woman who hasn't produced milk, or born calves for a husband, I found this to be quite an alienating and isolating text.
I know what it's like when you feel this deep connection with someone and you start seeing links and relations and parallels where there aren't really any at all. Such is the case here; the similitude didn't really translate on paper. Ni Ghriofa tries to make a work of art out of a work of art: 'Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. ' Sometimes this kind of ekphrasis works, sometimes not. The artist, Paula Rego has probably never heard of Eibhlin Dubh, but, for me, her staggering Howling Dog Woman, speaks more to the Caoineadh than anything else I've seen.
I applaud the author's exhaustive research, as she challenges historical gender inequities. In a system that eschews the existence of women prior to the 20th century, she had her work cut out - women were appendages, men's complement or, at best, pejoratively categorized. Ni Ghriofa's attempt to meat the bones of Eibhlin Dubh is to be commended, unfortunately, most of what we get is speculation.
On the whole, I found the narrative a bit contrived and irritating. I was bored. Nothing really jumped off the page until the masterpiece of the book - the text of the lament itself, which Ni Ghriofa includes at the back.