Overview

'Think about a tune ... the unsayable, the invisible, the longing in music. Here is a book of tunes without musical notes ... It wrings the heart' John Berger 'The voice that O'Grady has crafted succeeds so well ... running in parallel, Pyke's stark arresting images are laced between the paragraphs and chapters. The interplay between the two mediums is delicately powerful' Hilary White 'A masterpiece' Robert Macfarlane 'O'Grady does not just respond to Pyke's stark, beautiful photographs: he gives voice to thousands' Louise Kennedy 'The experience of Irish emigration uniquely and powerfully illuminated' Mark Knopfler 'If the words tell the story of the voiceless, the bleak lovely photographs show their faces. Fiction rarely gets as close to the messy, glorious truth as do memories and photographs. This rare novel dares to use both' Charlotte Mendelson, TLS An old man lies alone and sleepless in London. Before dawn he is taken by an image from his childhood in the West of Ireland, and begins to remember a migrant's life. Haunted by the faces and the land he left behind, he calls forth the bars and boxing booths of England, the potato fields and building sites, the music he played and the woman he loved. Timothy O'Grady's tender, vivid prose and Steve Pyke's starkly beautiful photographs combine to make a unique work of fiction, an act of remembering suffused with loss, defiance and an unforgettable loveliness. An Irish life with echoes of the lives of unregarded migrant workers everywhere. Since it was first published in 1997, I Could Read the Sky has achieved the status of a classic.

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9781806770717

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Reviews

'A masterpiece' -- Robert Macfarlane 'Twenty-odd years on it is somehow even more luminous and richly satisfying than the first time out ... I hope thousands of new readers find themselves keeping a copy under the pillow, unable to let it out of their sight even for the hours of darkness'  -- Annie Proulx 'I urge you to behold the alchemy between Timothy O'Grady's story and Steve Pyke's photographs; no book on the Irish emigrant experience has moved me more. O'Grady does not just respond to Pyke's stark, beautiful photographs: he gives voice to thousands'  -- Louise Kennedy 'The experience of Irish emigration uniquely and powerfully illuminated' -- Mark Knopfler 'It reminds us of a great and unforgivable truth – our cities are built on the loneliness of migrant workers, and their great sadness persists down the generations'  -- Kevin Barry 'What Pyke and O'Grady have done is read out imagination'  -- Dermot Healy 'If the words tell the story of the voiceless, the bleak lovely photographs show their faces. Fiction rarely gets as close to the messy, glorious truth as do memories and photographs. This rare novel dares to use both'  -- Charlotte Mendelson, TLS 'A lament for the cruelty of diaspora strained throush such pure, understated language you're surprised the words themselves are not weeping on the page'  -- Bloomsbury Review 'A fine, evocative, engaging act of storytelling that captures the essence of a displaced life for Irish exiles ... a work of literary genius'  -- Gerry Adams 'Supple, unshowy, beautiful writing ... What is really marvellous is O'Grady's ability to return to the well of familiar images of Irish emigration while being so utterly devoid of cliche ... People have been trying to read the sky for a long time. Rare masterpieces like this help us do it'  -- Irish Times 'Timothy O'Grady captures the collegiality, the acceptance of a common fate, that sustained communities, especially all male communities'  -- Irish Examiner

Author Information

Timothy O'Grady was born in Chicago and has lived in Ireland, London, Spain and Poland. He is the author of four works of non-fiction and three novels. His novel Motherland won the David Higham award for the best first novel in 1989. His novel I Could Read the Sky, a collaboration with photographer Steve Pyke, won the Encore Award for best second novel of 1997. I Could Read the Sky was filmed and also travelled as a stage show. His most recent novel is Light, published in 2004. In the 1970s, Steve Pyke was a punk rocker with an itch to do something more singular. He borrowed a friend's camera and since that time has photographed for every major magazine. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in many international permanent collections.

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