Irish Elegies

In this book, critically acclaimed author Chris Arthur continues his experiments with the mercurial literary genre of the essay, using it in innovative ways to explore aspects of family, place, memory, loss, and meaning. Through these unique prose meditations, readers are led to a dozen unexpected windows on Ireland. 

"Memoir, memory, and accretive gravitational force of associative thought - in Arthur's accomplished hands, the essay becomes a mosaic of meditation, simultaneously illuminated by the singular light of an examined moment and the zodiacal light of time's broad ecliptic." - Elizabeth Dodd, Southern Humanities Review

"Arthur is a master essayist, adept at bringing his whole brain to bear on meaning-making....As I came to the end of the book, I felt as if I had been sitting at the feet of a master, learning the ways of observation and meditation, as if I had been endowed with a new power for seeing beauty in everything around me, infused with the spirit of the essay." - Patrick Madden, Ploughshares

Praise for Arthur's previous work:

"Arthur's marvelous essays get to grips, evocatively and obliquely, with ideas of ancestry, continuity, attitudes and allegiances - all in a volatile Irish context . . .Taking a wide view, as he does, he can't escape an awareness of endless complexity underlying every moment and every perception; but, far from fostering vagueness, this results in unimpeachable precision." - Times Literary Supplement

"The deliberation with which he writes recalls a woodcutter, polishing his creations until they give off a deep, burnished glow." - Belfast Telegraph

"Whatever his subject, Arthur uses language that pares away at the core of experience with a care and precision we have grown unused to, chasing away clichés of thought as well as of phrase. Even in a rare genre, he's a rare writer indeed." - The Scotsman

"Chris Arthur s essay collections should not only put him on the map as the contemporary Irish essayist, but also raise general interest in the possibilities of the essay form for our time." - Graham Good, Southern Humanities Review

CHRIS ARTHUR is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at University of Wales, Lampeter, UK.