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Constellations : Reflections from Life
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Overview
The #1 Irish bestseller and winner of Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 An Post Irish Book Awards, winner of the 2020 Dalkey Literary Awards, named Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, Observer, Image, Irish Times, New Statesman, and Irish Independent, Sin ad Gleeson's essays chronicle--in crystalline, tender, powerful prose--life in a body as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood, and love of all kinds.
"I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles."
We treat the body as an afterthought, until it no longer can be. Until the pain or the pleasure is too great. Sin ad Gleeson's life has been marked by terrible illness, including leukemia and debilitating arthritis. As a child, she bathed in the springs of Lourdes, ever hopeful that her body would cooperate, ever looking forward to the day when she could take her body for granted. But just as she turns inward to explore her own pain, and then the marvel of recovery, and then the arrival of her greatest joys--falling in love, becoming a mother--she turns her gaze outward. She delves into history, art, literature, and music, plotting the intimate experience of life in a women's body across a wide-ranging map. From Nick Cave to Taylor Swift, Botticelli to Frida Kahlo, Louisa May Alcott to Lucy Grealy, Constellations is an investigation into the different ways of seeing, both uniquely personal and universal in its resonances.
In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, Gleeson explores--in her own spirited, generous voice--the fierceness of being alive. She has written "a book that] every woman should read" (Eimear McBride).
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780358213031
- ISBN-10: 0358213037
- Publisher: Ecco Press
- Publish Date: March 2020
- Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.45 pounds
- Page Count: 256
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Constellations
“In illness,” writes essayist Sinéad Gleeson, “it is hard to find the right words.” Gleeson knows what she’s talking about. Her short life has been full of medical difficulty—cancer, arthritis, as well as the more common experience of carrying and bearing two children. Her relationship with her body is both intimate and mundane, and she writes about pain with an absorbing intensity, telling stories of condescending doctors, creating metaphors that push the sanitized pain scale to its limits and, most passionately, describing artists who have rendered their pain into something more.
“I gravitated towards writers and painters,” Gleeson explains as she details her early response to an illness. “People who . . . transformed their damaged bodies into art.” Readers are introduced to dozens of artists, some Irish like Gleeson, others from all over the world. Some readers may, like me, find themselves searching for the images described in the book, eager to see for themselves the works that Gleeson writes about so well.
One such piece is featured in Gleeson’s essay “60,000 Miles of Blood.” In addition to telling her own stories of blood transfusion, which are contextualized by fascinating medical insights about how much blood humans have and how it moves through our bodies, she details the work of American artist Barton Beneš, who took the artifacts of his AIDS illness—including his own blood—and created a new type of iconography. He fashioned a crown of thorns out of IV tubes filled with his own HIV-positive blood; in lieu of thorns, he pierced the circlet with needles. Gleeson calls the work “delicate and devastating.”
Constellations: Reflections From Life will make you think differently about the body in all its weaknesses and feel grateful to the artists and writers who—like Gleeson—have transfigured their suffering into a sacred creative release. Though Gleeson is skeptical of heaven, she finds solace in the stars and their many constellations. In this book, she offers us a unique map of her own constellations, one that has clearly helped her find her way when navigating a wide and painful world.
Constellations
“In illness,” writes essayist Sinéad Gleeson, “it is hard to find the right words.” Gleeson knows what she’s talking about. Her short life has been full of medical difficulty—cancer, arthritis, as well as the more common experience of carrying and bearing two children. Her relationship with her body is both intimate and mundane, and she writes about pain with an absorbing intensity, telling stories of condescending doctors, creating metaphors that push the sanitized pain scale to its limits and, most passionately, describing artists who have rendered their pain into something more.
“I gravitated towards writers and painters,” Gleeson explains as she details her early response to an illness. “People who . . . transformed their damaged bodies into art.” Readers are introduced to dozens of artists, some Irish like Gleeson, others from all over the world. Some readers may, like me, find themselves searching for the images described in the book, eager to see for themselves the works that Gleeson writes about so well.
One such piece is featured in Gleeson’s essay “60,000 Miles of Blood.” In addition to telling her own stories of blood transfusion, which are contextualized by fascinating medical insights about how much blood humans have and how it moves through our bodies, she details the work of American artist Barton Beneš, who took the artifacts of his AIDS illness—including his own blood—and created a new type of iconography. He fashioned a crown of thorns out of IV tubes filled with his own HIV-positive blood; in lieu of thorns, he pierced the circlet with needles. Gleeson calls the work “delicate and devastating.”
Constellations: Reflections From Life will make you think differently about the body in all its weaknesses and feel grateful to the artists and writers who—like Gleeson—have transfigured their suffering into a sacred creative release. Though Gleeson is skeptical of heaven, she finds solace in the stars and their many constellations. In this book, she offers us a unique map of her own constellations, one that has clearly helped her find her way when navigating a wide and painful world.