If you were to glance only briefly at the title of the Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s prose debut you might be forgiven for assuming that A Ghost in the Throat was a story about demonic possession — and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Demonic? No. Possession? Certainly.
This spectral, arresting and at times disorientating autofiction is, most simply, the story of an author and her muse. But it isn’t just a story. Its fusion of historical biography, memoir and literary criticism makes it an intoxicating experiment in genre while also a heady and sensitive read. And that seems to be Ní Ghríofa’s modus operandi. As she sets out on a quest to discover all she can about a poet who has influenced her since childhood (deciding that she will ‘donate [her] days to finding hers’), the journey begins with what she calls ‘an unscientific mishmash of daydream and fact’.
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