Chris Arthur (1)

This is a collection of essays in the spirit of Kathleen Moore's "River Walking" and "Pine Island Paradox," but the connecting theme in this case is Northern Ireland.

Arthur states, "Even familiar things--known routes, recognised faces--are dotted with unexpected sinkholes, hidden wells, secret shafts and boreholes, all covered up, obscured, invisible. Normally we walk over them and the camoflauge that hides them bears our weight. But there's another dimension underneath our customary surfaces. Sometimes we fall through and find ourselves out of our depth . . . Irish Willow is a series of accounts of fallings through. Starting always from the familiar, the small scale, the known--hands, photographs, a country lane, trees, the sound of trains--I try to show how in such seeming shallows there are truly awesome depths."

Some of my favorite essays ("Table Manners" and "Atomic Education") deal with the quirky members of Arthur's extended family and the things he learned from them. Another essay ("Transplantations") talks about gardening and plants, and how they carry a bit of their place of origin with them even when transplanted, just as people do.

The essays are gently humorous while making connections between things in a unique way. They don't ignore the political history of Northern Ireland, but the majority of the book doesn't focus on it, either, and Arthur (who grew up in a fairly open-minded middle class Protestant family) is refreshingly nonpartisan with a broader perspective than the "us vs. them" that has been at the root of so much of the Troubles.… (meer)