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Said the Dead
From the author of
A Ghost in the Throat
, an unforgettable book - both history and ghost story - that will leave you gasping by its final page.
In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she too might have lived within those walls. Now, she notices a FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Following them, she finds herself drawn into an irresistible river of forgotten voices, those of the women who knew this place insistent, vivid and true. They murmur from archives and old records; they whisper from stairwells and walls. Among them - and in one figure in particular -- she may find meaning, solace, rage; her own salvation, perhaps, or her own vanishing?
A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds -- past and present, imagined and real -- to make something lasting and an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth.
In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she too might have lived within those walls. Now, she notices a FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Following them, she finds herself drawn into an irresistible river of forgotten voices, those of the women who knew this place insistent, vivid and true. They murmur from archives and old records; they whisper from stairwells and walls. Among them - and in one figure in particular -- she may find meaning, solace, rage; her own salvation, perhaps, or her own vanishing?
A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds -- past and present, imagined and real -- to make something lasting and an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth.
332 pages, Hardcover
First published May 21, 2026
About the author
Doireann Ní Ghríofa
20 books473 followersDoireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual writer, devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. A Ghost in the Throat finds an 18th century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood, milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Ireland, it went on to be described as “powerful” (New York Times), “captivatingly original” (The Guardian), and a “masterpiece” (Sunday Business Post). A Ghost in the Throat won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2021. It is to appear in 15 further languages worldwide.
Doireann is also the author of six critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), the James Tait Black Prize (Scotland), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others.
Doireann is also the author of six critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), the James Tait Black Prize (Scotland), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
May 12, 2026
Absolutely sensational… there are streams of tears running down my cheeks as I write this. What a transformative and monumental book. Tentatively adding this to my favourites of all time. I miss it already.
January 9, 2026
In November 2025 I lived in Cork City thanks to a booksellers’ exchange programme. The bedroom of my apartment had a window overlooking Fitzgerald Park and the hill beyond the River Lee. Every morning, as I woke up, I wondered what that large red-brick building stretching out before me might be: I could see the collapsed roof, windows opening onto an empty sky, trees growing inside. Only a few weeks later did I discover that it was the Good Shepherd’s Convent, a former Magdalene laundry, purchased by Cork City Council and slated for conversion into student accommodation. I know it is a mistake to think this way, but somehow the derelict convent transformed itself in my mind into the asylum that Doireann Ní Ghríofa chose to write about in her new book, a place that seems to share the same past and the same future. And it was there that the author took me, on one of my last days in Cork, allowing me to look at it through a gate and through her voice.
Because of a mix-up in the mail, the Reader — both protagonist and narrative device of the book — begins to receive letters not addressed to her. Her stubborn search leads her to consult the old records of the local asylum, where she repeatedly encounters the name of Dr Lucia Strongman, the only woman physician. Through her, the voices of the patients are released and take possession of the book, passing through the reader with memories, pain, and healing. For this is a book about healing: the only cure made possible when the past returns and makes itself present again. It is a book written by someone who believes that ghosts can be glitches in time, presences we can still encounter in the places they once inhabited.
Said the Dead is a sublime book, permeated by its author’s sensitivity and extraordinary empathy. It is also a nocturnal book, of births and deaths, and, as in A Ghost in the Throat, these pages too are a “female text”: the eyes of its women look back at us from Victorian photographs, made hazy and fantastical by the slow decay of paper.
Because of a mix-up in the mail, the Reader — both protagonist and narrative device of the book — begins to receive letters not addressed to her. Her stubborn search leads her to consult the old records of the local asylum, where she repeatedly encounters the name of Dr Lucia Strongman, the only woman physician. Through her, the voices of the patients are released and take possession of the book, passing through the reader with memories, pain, and healing. For this is a book about healing: the only cure made possible when the past returns and makes itself present again. It is a book written by someone who believes that ghosts can be glitches in time, presences we can still encounter in the places they once inhabited.
Said the Dead is a sublime book, permeated by its author’s sensitivity and extraordinary empathy. It is also a nocturnal book, of births and deaths, and, as in A Ghost in the Throat, these pages too are a “female text”: the eyes of its women look back at us from Victorian photographs, made hazy and fantastical by the slow decay of paper.
June 6, 2026
Doireann Ní Ghríofa's debut novel A Ghost in the Throat was published in 2020 by Tramp Press, founded by Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff in 2014 to “find, nurture and publish exceptional literary talent”.
It initially came to me attention via its shortlisting for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for innovative fiction from small presses, and went on to considerable literary prize success, but interestingly in a variety of categories - fiction; non-fiction; biography - the novel a distinctive blend of lyrical essay and autofiction, as the author told of her search for the woman, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, behind an 18th century poem and lament, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire.
Said the Dead, the author's second work, is in a similarly hybrid vein and another book I hope and expect to see earn prize success.
The novel is based around Our Lady's Hospital, Cork, which opened in 1852 as the Eglinton Lunatic Asylum, and became a mental and then a psychiatric hospital until it's closure in 1992.
The architect's drawing of the Eglington Lunatic Asylum:
It was subsequently converted to residential accomodation, and its seeing a For Sale sign (although the actual place is not named) that leads the author/narrator/subject to investigate further, aware of her own history, starting with a visit via her estate agent:
On a hill over the city, a derelict mental hospital had been partly converted into apartments, and now the hospital chapel was being advertised as a development opportunity too. She counted herself among the many who flinched as they passed that old institution. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she - whose distress had twice sent her clambering river railings seeking her ending - might have lived within those walls.
She called it a whim, the force that lifted the phone and made her thumb ask a favour: if the agent was arranging viewings of the chapel, might he allow her to pop in afterwards, just for a quick look? It all happened quite quickly then, the phone began to ring in her hand, and within fifteen minutes, she was watching him unlock the gate.
I hedge with the author/narrator/subject qualifier as the investigation into the asylum is conducted by a character referred to, in the third person, as the Reader. And another, unnamed narrator, provides their own commentary on her investigations, treating her obsession with the history of the mental hospital, as a form of psychiatry for the Reader.
The Reader soon exhausts her physical investigation into the part-refurbished part-derelict site but discovers a richer source in Cork's archives - detailed case notes (she focuses on the female side of the institution) of those incarcarated and treated there. Initially they are largely written by Dr William Scanlan, the Assistant Medical Officer, but then she spots another name:
What were they tor? Who were they for? Other doctors, she supposed, who might skim a patient's history before plotting treatments. Many entries were initialled W. S., matching the opening page: William Scanlan. Towards the end of November 1895, he was writing of a woman who said 'that she can stop the Sun from dancing, that her husband sold her to the clergy because he did not want her to be looking so well as she had too much money... She heard a man speaking to her during the night, while in bed. He said, "We'll meet again," but she does not know who he is? Later entries only shrugged 'No change since the last report, 'No change'. 'No change', 'No change'.
Years were lost to such repetition, while precious minutes were passing in the archive. Scanlan's signature was replaced by new squiggles - LS or GH or LFG or JF - but no one ever clarified whether the man in the night made good on his promise: 'We'll meet again.' Instead, one doctor observed that this patient fancies she is in a grand place and is very happy. LS! Three years later, the same hand found her 'elated and cheerful, fancies this is a lovely place and that she is wonderfully happy'. Even after a bout of influenza, she was 'still cheerful, although she now tells everyone that she is dead'. To this doctor, the patient appeared neat, clean and healthy, if 'very pale in complexion', and when the patient spoke from that blue page to address her doctor, ‘she says my name is Miss Justice.’
The Reader was taken aback. Was she looking at another woman?
And examining the minutes of the institution's Board she soon discovers that they appointed, unusually for the time, a female doctor, Lucia Strangman.
The obituary for Lucia Strangman Fitzgerald from the British Medical Journal in 1958:
The novel then consists of the Reader followng the history of the institution, and of Lucia, through the case notes, which she in part transcribes but in part brings to life in her fictionalised imaginings. We also see Lucia and her husband, another doctor at the institution, establishing the first psychiatric outpatient clinic in Ireland. And all the time the narrative voice concerns itself with the Reader's own present-day mental wellbeing.
Generally, the story told is of what comes across, particularly under Lucia's stewardship, as a caring institution, albeit one limited my the medical techniques of the time (indeed Lucia is required to act as a general surgeon as well as a psychiatrist) and prone to epidemics of TB and cholera. The main concern perhaps being the refrain of 'no change' and 'content' as many of the patients show no real improvement, or perhaps even desire to improve. But then the Reader comes across a letter from a relative of a patient, which makes her realise she is reading history through a one-sided lens:
Following polite enquiries about relatives and neighbours, Mary wrote of her stepsister, 'I saw Annie just once... she looks fairly well but her mental condition is no better, although she recognised me after a little while. She does not seem to feel the privation of these dismal walls. I know the outside world would seem foreign to her now. Have you got any idea of what kind of a place this is — well I must tell you, it is not a very good place and the treatment of the patients here is horrifying.'
The Reader's pencil rolled onto the archive floor. Her eye darted back to her question - 'Have you got any idea of what kind of a place this is' - No. She had been looking through the doctors' eyes for too long. If Lucia had written 'content here' about this stepsister, the Reader would have taken her words as fact. Scraping back her chair, she stumbled through the archive vestibule and locked herself into the bathroom.
She'd let the casebooks lull her into thinking of them as truth, and she was angry with herself for that, and angry that she couldn't put the doctors' books aside altogether in favour of letters composed by the patients themselves.
A coda to the novel provides an interpretation of the Reader's identity - or identities? - and most strikingly the identity of the psychiatrist-narrator.
Beautifully done. Perhaps my only hesitation the sheer volume of case studies, and the feeling the author wanted to do all the (anonymised) women she encountered in the archives justice, 4.5 stars.
It initially came to me attention via its shortlisting for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for innovative fiction from small presses, and went on to considerable literary prize success, but interestingly in a variety of categories - fiction; non-fiction; biography - the novel a distinctive blend of lyrical essay and autofiction, as the author told of her search for the woman, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, behind an 18th century poem and lament, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire.
Said the Dead, the author's second work, is in a similarly hybrid vein and another book I hope and expect to see earn prize success.
The novel is based around Our Lady's Hospital, Cork, which opened in 1852 as the Eglinton Lunatic Asylum, and became a mental and then a psychiatric hospital until it's closure in 1992.
The architect's drawing of the Eglington Lunatic Asylum:
It was subsequently converted to residential accomodation, and its seeing a For Sale sign (although the actual place is not named) that leads the author/narrator/subject to investigate further, aware of her own history, starting with a visit via her estate agent:
On a hill over the city, a derelict mental hospital had been partly converted into apartments, and now the hospital chapel was being advertised as a development opportunity too. She counted herself among the many who flinched as they passed that old institution. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she - whose distress had twice sent her clambering river railings seeking her ending - might have lived within those walls.
She called it a whim, the force that lifted the phone and made her thumb ask a favour: if the agent was arranging viewings of the chapel, might he allow her to pop in afterwards, just for a quick look? It all happened quite quickly then, the phone began to ring in her hand, and within fifteen minutes, she was watching him unlock the gate.
I hedge with the author/narrator/subject qualifier as the investigation into the asylum is conducted by a character referred to, in the third person, as the Reader. And another, unnamed narrator, provides their own commentary on her investigations, treating her obsession with the history of the mental hospital, as a form of psychiatry for the Reader.
The Reader soon exhausts her physical investigation into the part-refurbished part-derelict site but discovers a richer source in Cork's archives - detailed case notes (she focuses on the female side of the institution) of those incarcarated and treated there. Initially they are largely written by Dr William Scanlan, the Assistant Medical Officer, but then she spots another name:
What were they tor? Who were they for? Other doctors, she supposed, who might skim a patient's history before plotting treatments. Many entries were initialled W. S., matching the opening page: William Scanlan. Towards the end of November 1895, he was writing of a woman who said 'that she can stop the Sun from dancing, that her husband sold her to the clergy because he did not want her to be looking so well as she had too much money... She heard a man speaking to her during the night, while in bed. He said, "We'll meet again," but she does not know who he is? Later entries only shrugged 'No change since the last report, 'No change'. 'No change', 'No change'.
Years were lost to such repetition, while precious minutes were passing in the archive. Scanlan's signature was replaced by new squiggles - LS or GH or LFG or JF - but no one ever clarified whether the man in the night made good on his promise: 'We'll meet again.' Instead, one doctor observed that this patient fancies she is in a grand place and is very happy. LS! Three years later, the same hand found her 'elated and cheerful, fancies this is a lovely place and that she is wonderfully happy'. Even after a bout of influenza, she was 'still cheerful, although she now tells everyone that she is dead'. To this doctor, the patient appeared neat, clean and healthy, if 'very pale in complexion', and when the patient spoke from that blue page to address her doctor, ‘she says my name is Miss Justice.’
The Reader was taken aback. Was she looking at another woman?
And examining the minutes of the institution's Board she soon discovers that they appointed, unusually for the time, a female doctor, Lucia Strangman.
The obituary for Lucia Strangman Fitzgerald from the British Medical Journal in 1958:
The novel then consists of the Reader followng the history of the institution, and of Lucia, through the case notes, which she in part transcribes but in part brings to life in her fictionalised imaginings. We also see Lucia and her husband, another doctor at the institution, establishing the first psychiatric outpatient clinic in Ireland. And all the time the narrative voice concerns itself with the Reader's own present-day mental wellbeing.
Generally, the story told is of what comes across, particularly under Lucia's stewardship, as a caring institution, albeit one limited my the medical techniques of the time (indeed Lucia is required to act as a general surgeon as well as a psychiatrist) and prone to epidemics of TB and cholera. The main concern perhaps being the refrain of 'no change' and 'content' as many of the patients show no real improvement, or perhaps even desire to improve. But then the Reader comes across a letter from a relative of a patient, which makes her realise she is reading history through a one-sided lens:
Following polite enquiries about relatives and neighbours, Mary wrote of her stepsister, 'I saw Annie just once... she looks fairly well but her mental condition is no better, although she recognised me after a little while. She does not seem to feel the privation of these dismal walls. I know the outside world would seem foreign to her now. Have you got any idea of what kind of a place this is — well I must tell you, it is not a very good place and the treatment of the patients here is horrifying.'
The Reader's pencil rolled onto the archive floor. Her eye darted back to her question - 'Have you got any idea of what kind of a place this is' - No. She had been looking through the doctors' eyes for too long. If Lucia had written 'content here' about this stepsister, the Reader would have taken her words as fact. Scraping back her chair, she stumbled through the archive vestibule and locked herself into the bathroom.
She'd let the casebooks lull her into thinking of them as truth, and she was angry with herself for that, and angry that she couldn't put the doctors' books aside altogether in favour of letters composed by the patients themselves.
A coda to the novel provides an interpretation of the Reader's identity - or identities? - and most strikingly the identity of the psychiatrist-narrator.
Beautifully done. Perhaps my only hesitation the sheer volume of case studies, and the feeling the author wanted to do all the (anonymised) women she encountered in the archives justice, 4.5 stars.
Read
January 21, 2026'She read and read, because she had woken these voices, and to stop reading would silence them.'
Original, a novel no one could've written but this incredible author. Yet my fascination didn't always trump my impatience and at times I had to force myself ahead when I wished to be simply compelled.
Original, a novel no one could've written but this incredible author. Yet my fascination didn't always trump my impatience and at times I had to force myself ahead when I wished to be simply compelled.
June 18, 2026
3.5
UPDATE: I don’t know if my rating is accurate because I can’t stop thinking about the book now that its covers are closed and it’s back on my shelf. I think I wanted it to be like A Ghost in the Throat, which is unfair and like comparing two children. Possibly a 4… I loved learning about Lucia & her patients, but I didn’t always love the storytelling surrounding them. It’s a hard one to rate. Worth a read for the history alone.
UPDATE: I don’t know if my rating is accurate because I can’t stop thinking about the book now that its covers are closed and it’s back on my shelf. I think I wanted it to be like A Ghost in the Throat, which is unfair and like comparing two children. Possibly a 4… I loved learning about Lucia & her patients, but I didn’t always love the storytelling surrounding them. It’s a hard one to rate. Worth a read for the history alone.
June 23, 2026
Archives, names, and historical traces are incredibly powerful, but they are not yet a world.
I’m pretty bummed about not liking Doireann Ni Ghriofa’s Said the Dead more because I adored A Ghost in the Throat and loved her poetry collections. Here, she does a similar thing as in A Ghost in the Throat: archival pursuit, historical women, the narrator’s own life, motherhood, language, translation, hunger. However, instead of turning obsession into propulsion and openness, the book loses its poetic grip halfway through its “woman reading archives” plot. I don’t mind vibes and poetic fragments, but I’m supposed to feel something, and I simply can’t help drifting away. I still have the archive and the atmosphere, but the ghosts are no longer pulling me into the book.
I’m pretty bummed about not liking Doireann Ni Ghriofa’s Said the Dead more because I adored A Ghost in the Throat and loved her poetry collections. Here, she does a similar thing as in A Ghost in the Throat: archival pursuit, historical women, the narrator’s own life, motherhood, language, translation, hunger. However, instead of turning obsession into propulsion and openness, the book loses its poetic grip halfway through its “woman reading archives” plot. I don’t mind vibes and poetic fragments, but I’m supposed to feel something, and I simply can’t help drifting away. I still have the archive and the atmosphere, but the ghosts are no longer pulling me into the book.
June 8, 2026
This centres around the actual records female patients in Cork District Lunatic Asylum at the turn of the 20th century. It is a blend of fact and fiction. Despite an interesting premise the plot is difficult to follow. It is informative, written in an appealing style of prose, but lacks an edge that could have come from developing more of a fictional balance.
It will be to the liking of many, and it serves as a tribute to those who suffered such horrors. But I had hoped for something darker. Ultimately, it’s neither one thing nor another, not a historical account, and not a haunting novel based around actual records.
It will be to the liking of many, and it serves as a tribute to those who suffered such horrors. But I had hoped for something darker. Ultimately, it’s neither one thing nor another, not a historical account, and not a haunting novel based around actual records.
June 1, 2026
so offensively one of a kind, she’s in a league of her own!
June 6, 2026
Was hoping for so much more due to the interesting premise- but this was too poetic/lyrical and incoherent for me. The format was difficult to get into, and I wish there was less jumping around and back and forth.
June 9, 2026
She’s writing these just for me
June 9, 2026
I’ve genuinely never read anything like this before. It’s part memoir, part historical investigation, part ghost story, yet it doesnt fit into any one genre. The way Doireann Ní Ghríofa blends archival records, imagination and personal reflection creates something that feels completely unique.
What struck me most was how the novel explores the lives of women confined to a psychiatric institution through the eyes of a reader trying to piece together their stories. The book constantly questions what we can really know about people from the fragments they leave behind, and the result is both haunting and deeply moving. As the Reader becomes increasingly absorbed in the records, the line between history and imagination begins to blur, creating an unsettling but fascinating reading experience. At times I wasn’t entirely sure where reality ended and imagination began, but that felt like the point.
The last line in the book gave me goosebumps, a novel I will 100% be rereading.
What struck me most was how the novel explores the lives of women confined to a psychiatric institution through the eyes of a reader trying to piece together their stories. The book constantly questions what we can really know about people from the fragments they leave behind, and the result is both haunting and deeply moving. As the Reader becomes increasingly absorbed in the records, the line between history and imagination begins to blur, creating an unsettling but fascinating reading experience. At times I wasn’t entirely sure where reality ended and imagination began, but that felt like the point.
The last line in the book gave me goosebumps, a novel I will 100% be rereading.
June 4, 2026
FULL BODY CHILLS
May 24, 2026
Said the Dead is a haunting blend of history, memoir, and imagination that explores the lives of women confined to Cork Mental Hospital, pieced together through fragments of asylum records and forgotten voices. Rather than telling one straightforward story, the book moves between archival discoveries, reflections on womanhood and mental illness, and imagined moments from the lives of the patients themselves.
The writing is undeniably beautiful — lyrical, unsettling, and full of sorrow. One passage that really stayed with me was:
“It was also futile, since the river kept rising, seeping through her skin, into bones and blood; it rose until it was her. If she was the river, and the river was her, then the only way to escape it was by dissolving it in deeper waters. This was the same solution that had sent her clambering the river railings, years before. All her life she’d wanted to die. She didn’t know why.”
That sense of drowning in grief, memory, and despair runs through the whole book and creates an atmosphere that is both powerful and claustrophobic.
I really admired what the author was trying to do — giving voice to women who were ignored or erased by history — and there were sections that were genuinely moving. However, I struggled at times with the fragmented structure and the blending of fact with imagined narrative. It occasionally felt more like a poetic meditation than a cohesive book, and I found myself emotionally drifting in some parts.
Overall, this is an intelligent and beautifully written read with moments of real emotional impact.
The writing is undeniably beautiful — lyrical, unsettling, and full of sorrow. One passage that really stayed with me was:
“It was also futile, since the river kept rising, seeping through her skin, into bones and blood; it rose until it was her. If she was the river, and the river was her, then the only way to escape it was by dissolving it in deeper waters. This was the same solution that had sent her clambering the river railings, years before. All her life she’d wanted to die. She didn’t know why.”
That sense of drowning in grief, memory, and despair runs through the whole book and creates an atmosphere that is both powerful and claustrophobic.
I really admired what the author was trying to do — giving voice to women who were ignored or erased by history — and there were sections that were genuinely moving. However, I struggled at times with the fragmented structure and the blending of fact with imagined narrative. It occasionally felt more like a poetic meditation than a cohesive book, and I found myself emotionally drifting in some parts.
Overall, this is an intelligent and beautifully written read with moments of real emotional impact.
January 14, 2026
Yes it includes me!
This will make complete sense when you have read this one. The voices this brings alive. The many threats to women’s’ power and sovereignty. To be alive in Ireland over 100 years ago. The fight for independence. The shadow of ww1. The sheer fragility of it all.
Magnificent
This will make complete sense when you have read this one. The voices this brings alive. The many threats to women’s’ power and sovereignty. To be alive in Ireland over 100 years ago. The fight for independence. The shadow of ww1. The sheer fragility of it all.
Magnificent
June 14, 2026
this was deeply deeply not for me, but it's going to really work for a lot of people.
i'll briefly talk about what it is, because it sounds super fascinating and it's why i picked it up. ní ghríofa takes a large old building in cork, which used to be a psychiatric hospital and only closed down in the 90s for ever. it's been abandoned and parts of it are now private apartments. the narrator in this book, who is the author but distanced, wanders through this place both physically (in the derelict parts) and also psychically. she reads over records of the women who stayed there. she immerses herself in their stories and tries to tell them, while also discussing what brought her there. it's clear she's struggled significantly with her own mental health and a prevailing concern appears to be that her own mental health would have likely seen her in similar places a hundred years ago.
this is an emotional creative exercise, using the bones of nonfiction. the author is writing using public records, reconstructing stories of the women who have been in this hospital, along with a pretty interesting story about one of the staff, lucia strangman -- a woman herself, who went to medical school, who become one of the first psychiatric fellows, who then went and opened her own clinic after.
i want to be upfront and say that some of this is very beautifully written, that it is obviously hugely emotionally impactful to the author, that it even feels like an interesting thing to do. it's a huge undertaking and it is compassionate. but, for me, i just didn't get on with the odd intersection between fact and fiction and the blurring of the lines. the distancing between the author and the "Reader" she creates to not use "I" over and over is a stylistic choice that i didn't like. the creativity she explores in diving into these womens lives and trying to bring them to life might be interesting but it made me very very aware of the distance, too. she's obviously trying to erode that but i just didn't find it convincing. if you're using these accounts and records to recreate these women, i ended up thinking that it wasn't enough of either. i didn't think it worked as a nonfiction and it's clearly not fiction although it's certainly creative. i didn't like the fundamental choice in the creation of this book so it made me feel odd and strange as i listened to it. i just didn't like it.
but it isn't bad. it's just not for me. a really interesting concept, for sure, but i think you know within the first part if you'll get on with this. i do recommend giving it a go because i think a lot of people will get on with this.
i'll briefly talk about what it is, because it sounds super fascinating and it's why i picked it up. ní ghríofa takes a large old building in cork, which used to be a psychiatric hospital and only closed down in the 90s for ever. it's been abandoned and parts of it are now private apartments. the narrator in this book, who is the author but distanced, wanders through this place both physically (in the derelict parts) and also psychically. she reads over records of the women who stayed there. she immerses herself in their stories and tries to tell them, while also discussing what brought her there. it's clear she's struggled significantly with her own mental health and a prevailing concern appears to be that her own mental health would have likely seen her in similar places a hundred years ago.
this is an emotional creative exercise, using the bones of nonfiction. the author is writing using public records, reconstructing stories of the women who have been in this hospital, along with a pretty interesting story about one of the staff, lucia strangman -- a woman herself, who went to medical school, who become one of the first psychiatric fellows, who then went and opened her own clinic after.
i want to be upfront and say that some of this is very beautifully written, that it is obviously hugely emotionally impactful to the author, that it even feels like an interesting thing to do. it's a huge undertaking and it is compassionate. but, for me, i just didn't get on with the odd intersection between fact and fiction and the blurring of the lines. the distancing between the author and the "Reader" she creates to not use "I" over and over is a stylistic choice that i didn't like. the creativity she explores in diving into these womens lives and trying to bring them to life might be interesting but it made me very very aware of the distance, too. she's obviously trying to erode that but i just didn't find it convincing. if you're using these accounts and records to recreate these women, i ended up thinking that it wasn't enough of either. i didn't think it worked as a nonfiction and it's clearly not fiction although it's certainly creative. i didn't like the fundamental choice in the creation of this book so it made me feel odd and strange as i listened to it. i just didn't like it.
but it isn't bad. it's just not for me. a really interesting concept, for sure, but i think you know within the first part if you'll get on with this. i do recommend giving it a go because i think a lot of people will get on with this.
June 16, 2026
Said the Dead is one of those books that's nearly impossible to categorize. Is it fiction? Is it memoir? History? Fantasy? All of the above? The person telling the story (at times described using the first person and at times called simply "the Reader") comes across a former mental hospital being redeveloped into condos. Exploring some of the grounds and buildings, she feels a strange connection, which leads her to seek out the archives of the institution. There she comes across the unusual history of Lucia Strangman, one of the first female doctors to work with the mentally ill, and becomes obsessed with her case notes. The Reader becomes so immersed in the stories of the women who Lucia treated -- so often committed to the hospital not because they were truly ill but because they were at the mercy of men in their life or because they didn't fit in with the society of the time or simply due to extreme poverty -- that she often neglects her own life and family. The narrative is interspersed with haunting images of Lucia, her family, and some of her patients, and throughout there is a mysterious commentary to one side that suggests that as the Reader is somehow watching the lives of these patients unfold, someone is watching her. There is a dreamlike quality to the book, and there's never a clear sense of what is real and what is fiction, but overall there's an immense respect for the many women whose names and lives were utterly forgotten in time. As soon as I finished the book, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read it again, certain there was so much I missed.
Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 22, 2026.
Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 22, 2026.
Did Not Finish
June 19, 2026Said The Dead / Doireann Ní Ghríofa
🌙 DNF - 28% 🌒
🌙 2hrs, 51mins 🌒
🌙 5/17 Tracks 🌒
~ What’s left is what’s felt… ~
Just want to preface this with A Ghost in the Throat is one of my favourite books of all time. And I think it’s partly because I read it.
I fully intended to buy this when it came out but it became available on Borrowbox really quickly so I jumped at listening to it. And DNG is a terrific narrator, the only person who could get this feeling felt. To make it come alive. I remember meeting her online through work in Kildare Library collaborating with the Irish Writer’s Centre, and I was just in awe the whole time.
My reason for DNFing though is an above point. I believe wholeheartedly that this is a book to be read, not listened to. So while unfortunately I’m giving up at this point I will be definitely be revisiting because there are such legs to this story that has to be told that I must find out.
Audiobook Length: 10hrs, 8mins
Narrator: Doireann Ní Ghríofa
🎧 Listened to on Borrowbox 🎧
Read: 18/06/26 - 19/06/26
Release Date: 19/05/26
🌙 DNF - 28% 🌒
🌙 2hrs, 51mins 🌒
🌙 5/17 Tracks 🌒
~ What’s left is what’s felt… ~
Just want to preface this with A Ghost in the Throat is one of my favourite books of all time. And I think it’s partly because I read it.
I fully intended to buy this when it came out but it became available on Borrowbox really quickly so I jumped at listening to it. And DNG is a terrific narrator, the only person who could get this feeling felt. To make it come alive. I remember meeting her online through work in Kildare Library collaborating with the Irish Writer’s Centre, and I was just in awe the whole time.
My reason for DNFing though is an above point. I believe wholeheartedly that this is a book to be read, not listened to. So while unfortunately I’m giving up at this point I will be definitely be revisiting because there are such legs to this story that has to be told that I must find out.
Audiobook Length: 10hrs, 8mins
Narrator: Doireann Ní Ghríofa
🎧 Listened to on Borrowbox 🎧
Read: 18/06/26 - 19/06/26
Release Date: 19/05/26
June 13, 2026
A few years ago I took a trip to Ireland and was taken by some second cousins to the grave of my great-grandparents. People I never knew, without whom I wouldn’t exist - the ghosts of the people who made me.
This book explores that idea in a way that describes description. Like “A Ghost in the Throat” it isn’t easy to categorise - it sits somewhere between history, fiction and autobiography, with a poetic ending that turns a mirror back on the reader. It reminded me a lot of working in old buildings as I do, and feeling that sense that someone’s just left a room - 500 years ago - and you’re breathing in what they breathed out. As someone says on the book jacket, it’s an “act of witness” to the lives it documents, and breaks down the barriers between them and us. Stunning.
This book explores that idea in a way that describes description. Like “A Ghost in the Throat” it isn’t easy to categorise - it sits somewhere between history, fiction and autobiography, with a poetic ending that turns a mirror back on the reader. It reminded me a lot of working in old buildings as I do, and feeling that sense that someone’s just left a room - 500 years ago - and you’re breathing in what they breathed out. As someone says on the book jacket, it’s an “act of witness” to the lives it documents, and breaks down the barriers between them and us. Stunning.
Did Not Finish
June 18, 2026DNF approx 40%.
I reaaaally wanted to like this. The concept is so interesting but the abstract nature of the text makes it difficult for me to understand what is happening.
The story follows ‘the reader’ as she unearths archived texts from a local asylum in Cork. The problem is the book follows too many individual characters that it’s hard to form any kind of attachment to them. We also know little about ‘the readers’ motives initially that again it’s difficult to form any solid idea of who they are.
The text is beautifully written and lyrical in prose, which is usually something I enjoy, but not this time.
I reaaaally wanted to like this. The concept is so interesting but the abstract nature of the text makes it difficult for me to understand what is happening.
The story follows ‘the reader’ as she unearths archived texts from a local asylum in Cork. The problem is the book follows too many individual characters that it’s hard to form any kind of attachment to them. We also know little about ‘the readers’ motives initially that again it’s difficult to form any solid idea of who they are.
The text is beautifully written and lyrical in prose, which is usually something I enjoy, but not this time.
June 20, 2026
This will definitely be one of my favourite books of the year. As ever with Dioreann Ní Ghríofa, the writing is stunningly beautiful. She trawls through the records of an old asylum and explores the stories of its female psychiatrist and some of its female patients, through a mixture of both fact and fiction. Fascinating, thought provoking and absolutely beautiful.
May 28, 2026
What an absolutely amazing book . It’s deserving of all the praise .
June 10, 2026
3.5 - pretty but was often bored bar the war of independence bit
June 10, 2026
The author of this book is gifted at writing, descriptive and tender, a poet, but a storyteller I’m not so sure? Despite being well worded - some sentences honestly were so powerful and beautiful as standalone pieces of work - the repetitive nature of this book was such a slog to get through. Halfway through I felt like giving up and having finished it I don’t feel there was any payoff for having stuck with it.
Although, having slogged through it all the way to the end, maybe I did so as an act of solidarity to those female patients, the same as the reader. Maybe that was the point of it?
“She read and read, because she had woken these voices, and to stop reading would silence them.”
Although, having slogged through it all the way to the end, maybe I did so as an act of solidarity to those female patients, the same as the reader. Maybe that was the point of it?
“She read and read, because she had woken these voices, and to stop reading would silence them.”
June 19, 2026
The target audience for this book was me specifically so it's unsurprising that I'm not a bit well
June 8, 2026
Unique and gripping. Beautiful and devastating. So many feelings wrapped up in this book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
There were many pages left to read, but the archive clock never slowed its ticking, her allocated hours dwindling to minutes with brutal speed. The children would soon be emerging from school in raincoats and scuffed shoes, and her afternoon would fill with chores and homework and errands. Soon. But for a little longer, it could be just her and this book. She pressed onwards through the crowd, reading each person she met in the particularity of their sorrows, their enmities, their own cherished rage. If she recognised their distress, it was because she, too, had known the lure of the river's dark silks and the horror of being dragged back from her ending, but when she recognised wisps of herself in their lives, she understood that her pain was hers, and their pain was theirs.
I first came across Doireann Ni Ghriofa’s brilliant and unique “Ghost in the Throat” – part memoir, part historical biography, part autofiction, part essay about a 21st Century narrator searching for the woman behind a 18th Century poem - due its longlisting (on behalf of Tramp Press) for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize for risk-taking small-press Fiction. Its genre-bending nature was shown by its listing for other awards for Fiction (e.g. longlisted for the 2021 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction) and two genres of non-fiction – winner of the 2021 James Tait Black Prize for Biography and then Finalist for the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography (having also nominations for the 2021 cross-genre Folio Prize and won the overall and non-Fiction categories at the 2020 Irish Book of the Year awards).
And this – the bilingual poet and essayists first novel since then fits perhaps even more strongly with her self-description on her website as being an Irish writer “devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present” and is just as genre-defying (if I think more clearly starting with the outwards trappings of fiction) with its 21st century third-party narrator (“The Reader”) in communication with the lives of the patients and doctor in an Cork Victorian mental hospital via extensive and in the end almost life-consuming archival research - research carried out by the author herself for who “the reader” is a clear avatar.
The book opens with a chance call from an estate agent – simply to say that library notices have been going to the narrator’s old address – which then prompts the narrator to call back as she recognises the estate agent as one selling new built flat conversions in the old asylum, which she uses as an excuse to visit it. From there she finds herself drawn to the local archives to trace the history of the asylum and comes across a casebook on the treatment of female patients written by the lead doctor (and including descriptions of their condition – albeit with an all too common “no change” – and sometimes photos) – and is even more drawn in when she discovers that one of the doctors – Lucia – is female.
And from there she is drawn into the lives of many of those who were in the asylum, with the narrative blurring alongside the genre.
At times we are more reading of the Reader’s researches: her debates with the archivists over what she can both access (there is for example a 100 year rule) and what she can use (for some time she is told she has to anonymise names but feels strongly this is dishonouring the memory of the dead); her further investigations which might take her into board minutes, birth death and marriage registers, newspaper articles and more.
At other times we are much more in the lives of the women themselves.
Alongside this is an intriguing occasional interjection from another voice who is following the Reader’s investigations and concerned about the Reader’s own mental health (and perhaps displacement of care for that into the lives of the long dead patients).
As the story develops – additional strands start to weave in, both Irish history (the Independence struggles and Civil War) and the use of mesmerism to treat mental illness.
And there is an excellent end to the novel – where the identity of the Reader is acknowledged by name, the identity of the second voice becomes clearer and the reader of the novel ourselves (particularly perhaps if the reader is female).
Really an outstanding piece of work – as deserving of multiple and varying literary accolades as its predecessor – with perhaps the Goldsmith Prize for mould-breaking fiction where I would most like to see it featuring (a prize which is now overdue an Irish winner after their early dominance).
Until now, she has spoken only of the past, relying - at least in part - on fact.
But tonight, she collides with the present, a threshold I'd hoped might lead us into the treatment phase. But she isn't ready. Departing
from the facts of the past, she skips the present, and begins to tell the future, in past tense.
My thanks to Faber for an ARC
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
“She knew she couldn't make her will felt in this text; she couldn't change anything […] She let the book lead her onwards […] she read and read, and as she read, those lives were spinning from the text into her mind, where they were alive.” Just as I read Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat in a single sitting on a sad summer day, it seemed ritualistically vital to repeat the experience with Said the Dead, her forthcoming follow-up. I read it in a single sitting on a less sad winter’s day, spring on the verge, reading in the sunny window, so transfixed I wouldn’t have noticed night falling around me were it not for the book becoming increasingly unreadable in the dark. Reading it in this way may allow deeper access to its mood, driven as it is by obsession and compulsion, rituals and signs, daily work and nightly visitations. Immersing herself in the archives, a woman who may be Doireann or just Doireann-esque, or may be you / you-esque, researches and reclaims the lives of women admitted to an asylum in Cork around the turn of the turn of the 20th century. Identified as the Reader, she is glimpsed by a rarely-intruding first-person voice, Doireann-esque and also not, as she hinges the history of these women on one in particular: a doctor at the asylum, Lucia Strangman, pioneer of psychotherapeutic practices. Ní Ghríofa writes to, about and through these women, across and around time. In trying to sum up Ní Ghríofa’s genre- and form-bending approach, my notes read: polyphonic biblio-/biography; ‘moir’ (a memoir with the self occluded); non-fiction wearing fiction’s face; rehistory, resurrection, recovery (to recover the past; to recover oneself; to recover from illness). Too much to say and running out of words: here fact is “dreamt at a slant”; here we ask “Who chooses the site of a vision, the witness or the apparition?”; here “instead of haunting onwards from death, she was haunting backwards from life.” Ní Ghríofa’s meticulous prose, poet’s eye and unwavering heart weave a ghost story like no other, bringing real and unreal ghosts into your room and into the light. Out 21 May, thanks to Faber and Faber for the proof!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Ní Ghríofa brings her background in poetry, research abilities, and awareness of “the strange, the uncanny, and the incredible” in Said the Dead. The dead, it appears, have much to say if we would listen.
We, as readers, follow the listening Reader as they search the forbidden blue pages in the casebooks to learn about Dr. Lucia Strangman (1870-1958) and her patients at Cork Mental Hospital. Metanarratively, Ní Ghríofa and the Reader wade through patient notes stored at the Cork City and Country Archive Services and piece together the lives of Lucia and thirteen women. The Reader is written as a character in Lucia’s reality—“Lucia knew that this procedure would save her life, but the reader baulked at such horror. Her hand was heavy, slapping the book closed, but that distance wasn’t nearly enough”—and the unclearly narrated history lures the Reader to browse, see, and uncover mysteries. As such, Ní Ghríofa describes her fact-finding into scattered history as relentless research through the Reader; it’s neither described as frenetic nor obsessive, but earnest.
Her speculative fictionalization of the women who become Lucia’s patients, written sequentially from their perspectives, grounds the storytelling, even while the narration is dreamlike and disorienting. The author includes poems, such as the doctor’s prognoses and direct communication (i.e., Lucia to the Reader). However, it is her complete grammatical sentences that grabbed me: “inside the asylum, a dormant bacterium was shaking itself awake, sending stowaways to lurk on door handles and sinks and bannisters.” Ní Ghríofa’s revivification of the immaterial bodies works because her poetic sensitivity balances Said the Dead.
I rate Said the Dead 3.5 stars.
My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.
We, as readers, follow the listening Reader as they search the forbidden blue pages in the casebooks to learn about Dr. Lucia Strangman (1870-1958) and her patients at Cork Mental Hospital. Metanarratively, Ní Ghríofa and the Reader wade through patient notes stored at the Cork City and Country Archive Services and piece together the lives of Lucia and thirteen women. The Reader is written as a character in Lucia’s reality—“Lucia knew that this procedure would save her life, but the reader baulked at such horror. Her hand was heavy, slapping the book closed, but that distance wasn’t nearly enough”—and the unclearly narrated history lures the Reader to browse, see, and uncover mysteries. As such, Ní Ghríofa describes her fact-finding into scattered history as relentless research through the Reader; it’s neither described as frenetic nor obsessive, but earnest.
Her speculative fictionalization of the women who become Lucia’s patients, written sequentially from their perspectives, grounds the storytelling, even while the narration is dreamlike and disorienting. The author includes poems, such as the doctor’s prognoses and direct communication (i.e., Lucia to the Reader). However, it is her complete grammatical sentences that grabbed me: “inside the asylum, a dormant bacterium was shaking itself awake, sending stowaways to lurk on door handles and sinks and bannisters.” Ní Ghríofa’s revivification of the immaterial bodies works because her poetic sensitivity balances Said the Dead.
I rate Said the Dead 3.5 stars.
My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
well that took me a week to read, but i don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing?
if you know me, you know it read fast - but i’ve been absolutely swamped with school work over the last week and unable to get my teeth stuck into this weird wonder of a book so unfortunately, that will impact my review.
‘Said The Dead’ follows The Reader on her journey through the stories and lives of the many inmates at the Cork Lunatic Asylum, spanning from the 1880s all the way to the 1920s. it’s an incredibly clever book, past and present wound together in such a way that you often can’t tell where you are in time. i thought it was beautiful the way that the author recounted the tales of these women, all through the words of casebooks - which are entirely biased primary sources - but then twisted in her own versions of the tale.
it was interesting to read about how lives changed during the first set of troubles in the 1910s but what really captured me was the patients and Dr Lucia herself. as we kept learning more and more about these women, named and unnamed, you began to get a true sense of the obsession The Reader had over these case files and the history that had been buried in this decaying hospital.
however, due to my busyness this past week, i found it quite difficult to read and found that there was very little flow to the prose. it’s quite poetic, in a way that requires 100% of your focus which unfortunately, i just did not have. i would absolutely say this is still a fantastic book, it was just not the right time for me to read it.
thank you very much to Faber & Faber for my beautiful ARC of this fascinating book (truly, it’s a GORGEOUS book), i look forward to its release! 21/5/26, don’t miss it!!
if you know me, you know it read fast - but i’ve been absolutely swamped with school work over the last week and unable to get my teeth stuck into this weird wonder of a book so unfortunately, that will impact my review.
‘Said The Dead’ follows The Reader on her journey through the stories and lives of the many inmates at the Cork Lunatic Asylum, spanning from the 1880s all the way to the 1920s. it’s an incredibly clever book, past and present wound together in such a way that you often can’t tell where you are in time. i thought it was beautiful the way that the author recounted the tales of these women, all through the words of casebooks - which are entirely biased primary sources - but then twisted in her own versions of the tale.
it was interesting to read about how lives changed during the first set of troubles in the 1910s but what really captured me was the patients and Dr Lucia herself. as we kept learning more and more about these women, named and unnamed, you began to get a true sense of the obsession The Reader had over these case files and the history that had been buried in this decaying hospital.
however, due to my busyness this past week, i found it quite difficult to read and found that there was very little flow to the prose. it’s quite poetic, in a way that requires 100% of your focus which unfortunately, i just did not have. i would absolutely say this is still a fantastic book, it was just not the right time for me to read it.
thank you very much to Faber & Faber for my beautiful ARC of this fascinating book (truly, it’s a GORGEOUS book), i look forward to its release! 21/5/26, don’t miss it!!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I was lucky enough to get access to an Advance Reading Copy of Said the Dead. I can say confidently, this is one of my favourite books I've read this year, and might become one of my favourite books ever! Certainly one I intend to revisit.
All my favourite things are present here: 19th century history, archival research, materiality, textures, haunting, and the spatial qualities of time.
The narrator's malleable, transhistorical conversations with mental health patients and Doctors through archival records were lovingly, poetically realised. As an archive bod myself, I'll admit finding myself frustrated by how the narrator villainised archive workers and the rules of archives. It struck me as parallel to the discourse around The Asylum - are binding rules put in place to senselessly restrain, or to protect subjects? Pondering this ethical question was a pleasure that took nothing away from my reading, despite my bias!
Overall, I was so moved by this book that I immediately wanted to start writing something of my own - and yet held off, because Ní Ghríofna's narrative voice is so strong, I knew anything I put down on paper would unconsciously mimic her until my thoughts have had some time to distill.
All my favourite things are present here: 19th century history, archival research, materiality, textures, haunting, and the spatial qualities of time.
The narrator's malleable, transhistorical conversations with mental health patients and Doctors through archival records were lovingly, poetically realised. As an archive bod myself, I'll admit finding myself frustrated by how the narrator villainised archive workers and the rules of archives. It struck me as parallel to the discourse around The Asylum - are binding rules put in place to senselessly restrain, or to protect subjects? Pondering this ethical question was a pleasure that took nothing away from my reading, despite my bias!
Overall, I was so moved by this book that I immediately wanted to start writing something of my own - and yet held off, because Ní Ghríofna's narrative voice is so strong, I knew anything I put down on paper would unconsciously mimic her until my thoughts have had some time to distill.
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