Overview

I Could Read the Sky is a collaboration, in the shape of a lyrical novel, between writer Timothy O'Grady and photographer Steve Pyke.  It tells the story of a man coming of age in the middle of this century. Now at its end, he finds himself alone, struggling to make sense of a life of dislocation and loss. He remembers his childhood in the west of Ireland and his decades of bewildered exile in the factories, potato fields and on the building sites of England. He is haunted by the faces of the family he left behind and by the land that is still within him. He remembers the country and the seascapes, the bars and the boxing booths, the music he played, and the woman he loved. This elegiac narrative is accompanied by a succession of photographs taken by Pyke during his travels in Ireland — from starkly beautiful landscapes to unforgettable portraits and scenes from everyday life — which in their counterpoint with the text produce a powerful evocation of the Irish emigrant experience.

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9781800182714

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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 Could Read the Sky (Unbound) has just been reissued. 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 ‘I Could Read the Sky pays tribute to the voiceless and overlooked, and so addresses the exile in all of us' TLS 'Animated by small epiphanies' TLS 'The relics of (these) lives resurface in the murk of memory and find their clearest depiction in Pyke's evocative black-and-white photographs.' TLS

'The photographs are a reminder of everything which is beyond the power of words... And the words recall what can never be made visible in any photograph' JOHN BERGER 'If the words tell the stories of the voiceless, the bleak, lovely photographs that accompany it shows 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, Times Literary Supplement 'Speaks in the manner of an important work of art, memorably and beautifully' ANTHONY CRONIN, Sunday Independent

'The photographs are a reminder of everything which is beyond the power of words... And the words recall what can never be made visible in any photograph' JOHN BERGER 'If the words tell the stories of the voiceless, the bleak, lovely photographs that accompany it shows 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, Times Literary Supplement 'Speaks in the manner of an important work of art, memorably and beautifully' ANTHONY CRONIN, Sunday Independent 'I Could Read The Sky is a quiet minor masterpiece. It was one of my 'special books' as a graduate student in Cambridge a quarter of a century ago, and I still keep my first copy close, in that grey-green Harvill paperback edition. I think of it as existing in a remarkable kinship triangle with W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn and John Berger's A Fortunate Man' ROBERT MACFARLANE

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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