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Stones of Aran #1
Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
Describes a journey around the coast of Aran along the southern cliff-line of the Atlantic, including the Western Brannock Islets, followed by a return around the low-lying northern coast. The author records the archaeology, botany and birdlife, history and folklore of this region.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
26 people are currently reading
1221 people want to read
About the author
Tim Robinson
126 books44 followersTimothy Robinson (1935 – 2020) was an English writer, artist and cartographer. A native of Yorkshire, Robinson studied maths at Cambridge and then worked for many years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London, among other places. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands, and in 1984 he settled in Roundstone, Connemara. In 1986 his first book, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, was published to great acclaim. The second volume of Stones of Aran, subtitled Labyrinth, appeared in 1995. His last work was the Connemara trilogy. He died of Covid-19 in 2020.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
June 12, 2017
This account of the author’s 14-year experience of Aran Island at the mouth of Galway Bay conforms to what I consider “biography of place”, which dwells on the particulars of the geography, the flora and fauna, and history of a region as a means to tap into universals of human experience and identification with a locale. Among books that I include in this category for the Listopia collection under that name is Robinson’s later book on the nearby region of Ireland, “Connemara”. Though I am particularly attracted to the towering cliffs of this 8 by 2 mile island and a way of life reminiscent of the rural people on the rocky coast of Maine where I live now, I appreciated the one on Connemara better because of its richer detail on its current community of people and more coherent history. Most of Robinson’s systematic journeys around Aran Island and experience bring him into limited contact with people, and much of the history fuses with legend and myth when we move back into medieval and prehistorical epochs.
Many times my breath was taken away with his eloquence and vision in this “diary of intoxication with Aran”. Other times I struggled with interest in his many diversions and dense layers of his narrative. Much of the surface of the book follows the author’s clockwise tour of each cliff and beach of the island. Each name of a feature gives him an opportunity for riffs on the power of language and history of human uses and experience of each site. A long tradition of harnessing the resources of these places include fishing off the ledges, collecting birds and eggs for food and feathers, and harvesting seaweed and shellfish. There is so little soil for farming that the method of spreading seaweed and sand on the land has long been an important method to build up the soil. The export of seaweed ash for fertilizer was a major industry for a long time, as was the import of turf from Connemara peat-bogs for fuel. Because the wild sea and dangerous rocks around the island are challenging for typical vessels with deep keels, the tradition of using shallow currachs made of tarred canvas stretched over a light frame still persists.
Robinson taps into a rich history of literature and ethnography of the Aran islands. It is one of the few places where the Gaelic language has persisted over the centuries. The origins of the Celts and their language is still uncertain, but much myth abounds. Robinson dwells a lot on the content of a medieval work, Lebor Gabala Erenn, which translates as “The Book of the Taking (i.e. conquest) of Ireland.” This book was compiled by monks as a blending of Gaelic lore in a Christian frame. The ancient massive fort on the island, Dun Aonghasa, is reputed to have been built by Aonghas, the legendary leader of the Fir Bolg ancestors of the Celts. Robinson has trouble getting literary vibrations from this ruined fort, which is a main stop for tourists to the island for centuries:
I would rather believe the place was built for the worship of storms, to which it is well adapted, than to impress the neighbors. It is generally thought to date from a few centuries BC, in the early Iron Age, both on rather vague grounds…
A more significant cultural window onto the Aran people for Robinson is the film, “Man of Aran”, created in 1932 by Robert Flaherty. For the movie, the director featured in the plot the
long-abandoned practice of harpooning basking sharks from currachs. Despite the romantic fiction of the film, Robinson finds some power in this modern myth-making:
The images Flaherty dealt us, of Man as subduer of sea-monsters, of Wife anxiously looking out for his return while rocking Babe-in-the-Cradle, and of Son eager to follow him into manhood—the perfect primal family in unmediated conflict with a world of towering waves and barren rocks, as if eternally in silhouette against the storm—remain like grand, somber court-cards on the table of the mind, and will not be brushed aside by subsequent knowledge of the subtle actualities of Aran life.
The recent centuries of history of the Aran islands reflects the history of Ireland in microcosm. This includes a long tradition of aristocratic British governors and land-owners trying to extract profits over the peasants, the oppression of Catholics by the Protestants, and the periodic attempts to ban Celtic traditions of Gaelic language, music, and ceremonies. Various clans jockeyed for power and position with respect to the Brits, including O’Briens, Burkes, and Flahertys. The latter went from ancient practices of piracy to dominant positions of real power and rebellion. Robinson’s book “Connemara” has a lot more elucidation on the overall impact of the potato famines in the 1840s and the rise of power by the Flahertys.
There is much food for thought and potent little epiphanies in this challenging read. Robinson completes his circle of the island and returns to his beginning, with the potent metaphor of the step as a mode to transcribe the universal and the particular and its contrast to the mentality of dolphins in the formless sea:
I waded out until they were passing and repassing within a few yards of me; it was still difficult to see the smoothly arching succession of dark presences as a definite number of individuals. Yet their unity with their background was no jellyfish-like dalliance with dissolution; their mode of being as an intensification of their medium into alert, reactive self-awareness; they were wave made flesh, with minds solely to ensure the moment-to-moment reintegration of body and world.
This instance of wholeness beyond happiness made me a little despondent …: a dolphin may be his own poem, but we have to find our rhymes elsewhere, between words in literature, between things in science, and our way back to the world involves us in an endless proliferation of detours. Let the problem be symbolized by that of taking a single step as adequate to the ground it clears as is the dolphin’s arc to its wave.
Many times my breath was taken away with his eloquence and vision in this “diary of intoxication with Aran”. Other times I struggled with interest in his many diversions and dense layers of his narrative. Much of the surface of the book follows the author’s clockwise tour of each cliff and beach of the island. Each name of a feature gives him an opportunity for riffs on the power of language and history of human uses and experience of each site. A long tradition of harnessing the resources of these places include fishing off the ledges, collecting birds and eggs for food and feathers, and harvesting seaweed and shellfish. There is so little soil for farming that the method of spreading seaweed and sand on the land has long been an important method to build up the soil. The export of seaweed ash for fertilizer was a major industry for a long time, as was the import of turf from Connemara peat-bogs for fuel. Because the wild sea and dangerous rocks around the island are challenging for typical vessels with deep keels, the tradition of using shallow currachs made of tarred canvas stretched over a light frame still persists.
Robinson taps into a rich history of literature and ethnography of the Aran islands. It is one of the few places where the Gaelic language has persisted over the centuries. The origins of the Celts and their language is still uncertain, but much myth abounds. Robinson dwells a lot on the content of a medieval work, Lebor Gabala Erenn, which translates as “The Book of the Taking (i.e. conquest) of Ireland.” This book was compiled by monks as a blending of Gaelic lore in a Christian frame. The ancient massive fort on the island, Dun Aonghasa, is reputed to have been built by Aonghas, the legendary leader of the Fir Bolg ancestors of the Celts. Robinson has trouble getting literary vibrations from this ruined fort, which is a main stop for tourists to the island for centuries:
I would rather believe the place was built for the worship of storms, to which it is well adapted, than to impress the neighbors. It is generally thought to date from a few centuries BC, in the early Iron Age, both on rather vague grounds…
A more significant cultural window onto the Aran people for Robinson is the film, “Man of Aran”, created in 1932 by Robert Flaherty. For the movie, the director featured in the plot the
long-abandoned practice of harpooning basking sharks from currachs. Despite the romantic fiction of the film, Robinson finds some power in this modern myth-making:
The images Flaherty dealt us, of Man as subduer of sea-monsters, of Wife anxiously looking out for his return while rocking Babe-in-the-Cradle, and of Son eager to follow him into manhood—the perfect primal family in unmediated conflict with a world of towering waves and barren rocks, as if eternally in silhouette against the storm—remain like grand, somber court-cards on the table of the mind, and will not be brushed aside by subsequent knowledge of the subtle actualities of Aran life.
The recent centuries of history of the Aran islands reflects the history of Ireland in microcosm. This includes a long tradition of aristocratic British governors and land-owners trying to extract profits over the peasants, the oppression of Catholics by the Protestants, and the periodic attempts to ban Celtic traditions of Gaelic language, music, and ceremonies. Various clans jockeyed for power and position with respect to the Brits, including O’Briens, Burkes, and Flahertys. The latter went from ancient practices of piracy to dominant positions of real power and rebellion. Robinson’s book “Connemara” has a lot more elucidation on the overall impact of the potato famines in the 1840s and the rise of power by the Flahertys.
There is much food for thought and potent little epiphanies in this challenging read. Robinson completes his circle of the island and returns to his beginning, with the potent metaphor of the step as a mode to transcribe the universal and the particular and its contrast to the mentality of dolphins in the formless sea:
I waded out until they were passing and repassing within a few yards of me; it was still difficult to see the smoothly arching succession of dark presences as a definite number of individuals. Yet their unity with their background was no jellyfish-like dalliance with dissolution; their mode of being as an intensification of their medium into alert, reactive self-awareness; they were wave made flesh, with minds solely to ensure the moment-to-moment reintegration of body and world.
This instance of wholeness beyond happiness made me a little despondent …: a dolphin may be his own poem, but we have to find our rhymes elsewhere, between words in literature, between things in science, and our way back to the world involves us in an endless proliferation of detours. Let the problem be symbolized by that of taking a single step as adequate to the ground it clears as is the dolphin’s arc to its wave.
July 22, 2016
If you have been to Aran, or plan to go, or long to go, this book can serve as an aid to memory, an introduction, or a way there. But be warned: the reading demands care and a kind of faith—namely, that walking in circles is not for nothing.
I carted this (very elegant—bless the NYRB) little volume around everywhere last winter—friends eventually started asking “Haven’t you been reading that for like, months?” At which point I would explain this pilgrim’s lack of progress by reading them the following sentence:
Fond chuckles at the author’s expense aside, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the reading experience—just as I can’t say I enjoyed walking the south shore of Aran. Joy is not the overarching mood of the island. Like Robinson, “however fascinating the life and lore of the clifftops, I can never walk those heights without bringing home like burrs on my clothes the seeds of nightmare.” (Now there's an image that beats cosmic dandruff any day!)
So here are my two caveats to the curious: 1) Even an erstwhile classicist, no stranger to Ciceronian periods propping up an overwrought metaphor or four (and therefore perhaps the most sympathetic reader Robinson could hope for), thought the prose a bit much at times. (But it has to be, you see—it has to wear away at you like the relentless Atlantic, until it’s polished and gutted you; or, better yet—it has to be as uneven, muddy, and pitted as the terrain it describes, so that you strain and stagger and take misstep after misstep, always turning back to see where you left the last clause, and who, exactly, the subject of this circuitous journey of a sentence turned out to be. Robinson’s a mathematician, and consequently attentive to form.)
And 2) Aran is bleak. It is grey and rocky and rainy, and when there is sunshine it’s only just enough so as you remember what you’re missing when the clouds inevitably come rolling on in. Oh, and every once and a while, someone gets blown off a cliff. What I’m trying to get at: if you’re the kind of person who would move to LA for the weather, this place (this book? I can hardly tell them apart anymore) may not be for you.
At any rate, even if you like hiking and read Burton for fun, the going is arduous. What with the bleakness of the landscape and the Baroqueness of the frame, a slow and measured approach is advisable. Mousse-rich language might make the medicine of existential dread go down easier, but even so—I know I could only stomach so much Robinson at one go. (I’m also inordinately anal about looking up every word I can’t conjure an image to and, speaking as a city kid, if the bird isn’t a pigeon, I got nothing—Chat? shag? plover? I hardly know ’er!)
That being said, those who persevere will, like all palmers past, find there’s grace at journey’s end (which is, of course, where they began); and if you’re like me, learn more than you know what to do with about North Atlantic flora, fauna, and rock formation along the way—not all the book's doing—often a cursory Google would result in an hour’s Wiki-binge—now, was this a distraction from the quest, or am I supposed to embrace sidetracks as just another step of the journey?
If there’s any grand ‘take-away’ from Robinson, it’s that the divine is in the details, and perhaps nowhere else. He treats life’s minutiae with the same reverential attention as its cataclysms, and by the end one isn’t sure what’s sublime and what mundane. There is no mystery in such profundity, at least none that isn’t in the doing of it—the walking, the reading, the attending to. Robinson’s Pilgrimage at full circle is a heroic feat—having roamed through haunted lands in search of some secret knowledge which he failed to find, he none the less returned to tell the tale; and, great mythographer that he is, he has inscribed his ritual in words without loss or profanation. You cannot read the words without enacting the ritual—you can’t read the book with its relentless accumulation of specificity and not be trudging wearily along the grey margins of Aran. So be prepared, when you at last look up from the page, to come out of the experience bone-tired, but sharper-eyed and satisfied, and bringing home both the seeds of nightmare and of dreams.
I’m going to have to wait a long while before setting foot in the Labyrinth. I don't have the strength of will for the requisite sustained attention yet; besides which, it really is a winter’s read.
—K
Recommended for fans of the The Stones of Aran: From the Mouth of the Whale —more impressionistic in style, but provokes a very similar feeling. And of course Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone,” which is mentioned in the introduction, is also tremendous.
I carted this (very elegant—bless the NYRB) little volume around everywhere last winter—friends eventually started asking “Haven’t you been reading that for like, months?” At which point I would explain this pilgrim’s lack of progress by reading them the following sentence:
“Whereupon, rebelliously struggling through this clogged precipitate of scourings worn off its housing by the gyrating sea, this lumpish outwash of the wasting-away of the Earth, this dandruff of a seedy cosmos, one begins to feel that even if the whole did have a meaning narrow enough to be discovered by or revealed to such infinitesimals as Man, it would be one which we, honouring ourselves as dust, should decline to read or make our own.”Which is, to be fair, the most outrageous example I could find, but nevertheless epitomizes everything both grand and amiss in Robinson’s style. And it did perk me up during a particularly difficult mile, as I couldn't help but laugh at what can only be described as self-parody nonpareil.
Fond chuckles at the author’s expense aside, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the reading experience—just as I can’t say I enjoyed walking the south shore of Aran. Joy is not the overarching mood of the island. Like Robinson, “however fascinating the life and lore of the clifftops, I can never walk those heights without bringing home like burrs on my clothes the seeds of nightmare.” (Now there's an image that beats cosmic dandruff any day!)
So here are my two caveats to the curious: 1) Even an erstwhile classicist, no stranger to Ciceronian periods propping up an overwrought metaphor or four (and therefore perhaps the most sympathetic reader Robinson could hope for), thought the prose a bit much at times. (But it has to be, you see—it has to wear away at you like the relentless Atlantic, until it’s polished and gutted you; or, better yet—it has to be as uneven, muddy, and pitted as the terrain it describes, so that you strain and stagger and take misstep after misstep, always turning back to see where you left the last clause, and who, exactly, the subject of this circuitous journey of a sentence turned out to be. Robinson’s a mathematician, and consequently attentive to form.)
And 2) Aran is bleak. It is grey and rocky and rainy, and when there is sunshine it’s only just enough so as you remember what you’re missing when the clouds inevitably come rolling on in. Oh, and every once and a while, someone gets blown off a cliff. What I’m trying to get at: if you’re the kind of person who would move to LA for the weather, this place (this book? I can hardly tell them apart anymore) may not be for you.
At any rate, even if you like hiking and read Burton for fun, the going is arduous. What with the bleakness of the landscape and the Baroqueness of the frame, a slow and measured approach is advisable. Mousse-rich language might make the medicine of existential dread go down easier, but even so—I know I could only stomach so much Robinson at one go. (I’m also inordinately anal about looking up every word I can’t conjure an image to and, speaking as a city kid, if the bird isn’t a pigeon, I got nothing—Chat? shag? plover? I hardly know ’er!)
That being said, those who persevere will, like all palmers past, find there’s grace at journey’s end (which is, of course, where they began); and if you’re like me, learn more than you know what to do with about North Atlantic flora, fauna, and rock formation along the way—not all the book's doing—often a cursory Google would result in an hour’s Wiki-binge—now, was this a distraction from the quest, or am I supposed to embrace sidetracks as just another step of the journey?
If there’s any grand ‘take-away’ from Robinson, it’s that the divine is in the details, and perhaps nowhere else. He treats life’s minutiae with the same reverential attention as its cataclysms, and by the end one isn’t sure what’s sublime and what mundane. There is no mystery in such profundity, at least none that isn’t in the doing of it—the walking, the reading, the attending to. Robinson’s Pilgrimage at full circle is a heroic feat—having roamed through haunted lands in search of some secret knowledge which he failed to find, he none the less returned to tell the tale; and, great mythographer that he is, he has inscribed his ritual in words without loss or profanation. You cannot read the words without enacting the ritual—you can’t read the book with its relentless accumulation of specificity and not be trudging wearily along the grey margins of Aran. So be prepared, when you at last look up from the page, to come out of the experience bone-tired, but sharper-eyed and satisfied, and bringing home both the seeds of nightmare and of dreams.
I’m going to have to wait a long while before setting foot in the Labyrinth. I don't have the strength of will for the requisite sustained attention yet; besides which, it really is a winter’s read.
—K
Recommended for fans of the The Stones of Aran: From the Mouth of the Whale —more impressionistic in style, but provokes a very similar feeling. And of course Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone,” which is mentioned in the introduction, is also tremendous.
January 13, 2021
This is my third time reading this book, so I'm updating here. I bought it in 1991 according to the flyleaf, and read it then, then again when the second volume came out (which it killed me to wait all those years for!), and again over the past week because I needed something super detached from the attempted coup going on in the US. Sadly, Robinson and his wife Máiréad both died of COVID late last year.
It's as beautiful as I remembered it. Robinson meditates over the placenames, history, botany, and geology of each little spot he encounters on a circuit of the coast of the island of Aran, producing an interconnected series of small essays that add up to an affectionate and thoughtful summation of the island.
This was published over 30 years ago, so the Aran that Robinson gives us is the Aran of the 1980s. At the time I first read it, the Aran in the book was perhaps very close to the actual Aran, so there was a present-tense feel to the experience. Returning to the book now, it's different - what is Aran now? this is no longer a book about how the place is but about how it was. If I went there now, what would it be? Knowing that the island of the book is probably not there anymore, and that Robinson is not alive anymore, gives the experience of reading it a bittersweet aftertaste.
On to reread the second book.
It's as beautiful as I remembered it. Robinson meditates over the placenames, history, botany, and geology of each little spot he encounters on a circuit of the coast of the island of Aran, producing an interconnected series of small essays that add up to an affectionate and thoughtful summation of the island.
This was published over 30 years ago, so the Aran that Robinson gives us is the Aran of the 1980s. At the time I first read it, the Aran in the book was perhaps very close to the actual Aran, so there was a present-tense feel to the experience. Returning to the book now, it's different - what is Aran now? this is no longer a book about how the place is but about how it was. If I went there now, what would it be? Knowing that the island of the book is probably not there anymore, and that Robinson is not alive anymore, gives the experience of reading it a bittersweet aftertaste.
On to reread the second book.
March 9, 2025
There is no writer like Tim Robinson. He does not fit into any category or genre. He is a unique.
Robinson, who was brought up In Yorkshire was a cartographer and an artist and also a wonderful writer. This work is the first part of two books which describe the landscapes of Arainn, the largest of the Aran islands which are 30 miles off the Galway coast of Ireland. And this one describes the coastal landscape as he walks clockwise around it.
The island is just 12 square miles and the fact that this book runs to 370 pages gives some idea of the detail, both in observation and research that went into it.
It took many years to complete and is a lasting monument to the island, its people and its very stones.
He was not religious but Robinson, at times, writes like a mystic. And certainly such discipline and attention to detail and willingness to see profound truth in small places is the mark of a spiritual mind.
He displays a reverence for the Irish language and a dedication to preserving in his words names, working practices and buildings all of which are in danger of being forgotten as this isolated place is swallowed up by new ways of existence.
It is a wonderful book which provides great rewards for those who are prepared to slow their pace and absorb this miracle of descriptive prose.
Robinson, who was brought up In Yorkshire was a cartographer and an artist and also a wonderful writer. This work is the first part of two books which describe the landscapes of Arainn, the largest of the Aran islands which are 30 miles off the Galway coast of Ireland. And this one describes the coastal landscape as he walks clockwise around it.
The island is just 12 square miles and the fact that this book runs to 370 pages gives some idea of the detail, both in observation and research that went into it.
It took many years to complete and is a lasting monument to the island, its people and its very stones.
He was not religious but Robinson, at times, writes like a mystic. And certainly such discipline and attention to detail and willingness to see profound truth in small places is the mark of a spiritual mind.
He displays a reverence for the Irish language and a dedication to preserving in his words names, working practices and buildings all of which are in danger of being forgotten as this isolated place is swallowed up by new ways of existence.
It is a wonderful book which provides great rewards for those who are prepared to slow their pace and absorb this miracle of descriptive prose.
March 29, 2021
I want to give this a lower review, but that is not fair. I found it terribly tedious, but it was wonderfully written for what it was. The amount of detail in describing the island is mind blowing. The author certainly did his research. He also had a wonderful wit, and I laughed at certain sentences here and there, all the while barely staying awake for most of the descriptions. If he wrote a short version, stones of Aran abridged, it would be more up my cliff.
April 15, 2013
A walking meditation round the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. History, archaeology, geology, natural history but above all a grand Irish slowing down written by an English mathematician and long time resident of the main island. Brain......slows.....down.....nicely....
November 25, 2023
To be clear, this book is not for everyone. But for me, it's breadth of focus ironically on a small finite portion (the coast) of a small bit of land rising out of the western Irish waters, is unquestionably a terrific read. Flitting between geology, botany, marine biology, history, literature, folklore, mythology, linguistics, and more, all baked into a wonderful mélange of cartography, Robinson gives us a view of Aran in so very many dimensions that this book almost cries out for a new category of writing.
Perhaps not all of his occasional digressions into philosophy, or attempts to frame his purpose and writing in a larger meaning, are entirely successful. Writer, heed thy own words: "One should forego these overly luxuriant metaphors that covertly impute a desire of communication to non-human reality." And on occasion when he quotes a literary work, the mellifluous flow of the practiced author may sometimes cause Robinson to pale in comparison. His style is not so obviously poetic or quotable, but his ability to see, describe, and find the relevance, of the slightest features of the landscape is expansive and deep.
I will not read it directly, to avoid over-saturation, but I greatly look forward to diving into the second book investigating the interior of the island.
Perhaps not all of his occasional digressions into philosophy, or attempts to frame his purpose and writing in a larger meaning, are entirely successful. Writer, heed thy own words: "One should forego these overly luxuriant metaphors that covertly impute a desire of communication to non-human reality." And on occasion when he quotes a literary work, the mellifluous flow of the practiced author may sometimes cause Robinson to pale in comparison. His style is not so obviously poetic or quotable, but his ability to see, describe, and find the relevance, of the slightest features of the landscape is expansive and deep.
I will not read it directly, to avoid over-saturation, but I greatly look forward to diving into the second book investigating the interior of the island.
May 5, 2024
Wat een plezier dit boek te lezen! Ik las het met mondjesmaat om er langer van te genieten. Tim Robinson nam me mee naar de Aran-eilanden, ten westen van het Ierse vasteland, een spikkel land in de Atlantische Oceaan. Zelf verliet hij Londen om samen met zijn vrouw zeven jaar op Aran te gaan wonen. Hij wandelt de kust van het eiland af en schrijft over de geologie, de fauna en flora, de mythes en legendes van het land, de geschiedenis van bezettingen en onderdrukking, de armoede en het lijden, de kracht van de inwoners om het harde leven te doorstaan. Hij doet dit op een filosofische manier, in poëtische taal die me aan Sebald doet denken. Ik ga er ooit heen, misschien niet lijfelijk maar als ik het boek herlees, wordt het net of ik er ben. Want ook ik struin graag over stranden in de Keltische rand van Europa, in Schotland weliswaar maar de vogels en de flora, de verhalen en sfeer zijn dezelfde. Gelukkig is er nog een tweede deel waarin hij het binnenland verkent en nog een boek over Connemara. En zo wordt lezen ook wat reizen.
March 17, 2025
Very enjoyable as a morning tea book. It's split into microchapters typically 1-10 pages, each very focused. As a result I think we miss out on some of the wonderful thematic connections he makes in the more long form chapters of his Connemara books. Also feel like I got a bit lost in the sauce in the middle with the repetition of named Poill, Poirt, Tránna and Clocha but the last 30 pages or so were incredibly focused and reflective with some beautiful closing remarks. Excited to dive into book two which is dauntingly twice as thick.
Robinson truly combs the beach for placenames and lore, and I continue to be impressed by the respect and deference he pays to locals not just as sources of information but as human beings to connect with. A lot of this sort of writing can tend to be more prescriptive, and every book I continue to read by this guy paints the picture of a humble and deferential figure who really sought to connect to land wherever he stood. Shame I will not be able to chat with him this summer.
Robinson truly combs the beach for placenames and lore, and I continue to be impressed by the respect and deference he pays to locals not just as sources of information but as human beings to connect with. A lot of this sort of writing can tend to be more prescriptive, and every book I continue to read by this guy paints the picture of a humble and deferential figure who really sought to connect to land wherever he stood. Shame I will not be able to chat with him this summer.
May 22, 2021
Despite the vivid images conjured up by Robinson's prose, I found this book a slow read, and not an easy one. Part of that was due to my own ignorance of the Irish language. Of necessity, place names and phrases in that language appear on nearly every page, but because I could not pronounce them mentally as I read, they broke the flow of the words.
That aside, I did learn a great deal by reading this book. The harvesting of various seaweeds was something I knew nothing about. Or the details of the island's limestone geology and how it has been shaped by rain and sea. I appreciated the author's observations about plants as well.
I acknowledge that this is a five-star piece of writing, and my difficulties with reading it were largely due to my own deficiencies of knowledge.
That aside, I did learn a great deal by reading this book. The harvesting of various seaweeds was something I knew nothing about. Or the details of the island's limestone geology and how it has been shaped by rain and sea. I appreciated the author's observations about plants as well.
I acknowledge that this is a five-star piece of writing, and my difficulties with reading it were largely due to my own deficiencies of knowledge.
July 24, 2020
It took me more than one year to follow Tim Robinsons steps around the isle of Aran. The rocky underground didn't make it a smooth pilgrimage. My view on the isle and its coasts got often blurred by the sentences of the writer and the old Irish words. I found myself more than once hopping and jumping over some stones instead of retracing my steps to understand fully what I was reading. I missed some of the poetry of storytelling to make these short but intense chapters into powerful nature writing. I couldn't always glimpse the sea or feel the wind above the shores in between the words, so I guess the stones of Aran are as solid as their history makes us believe.
September 28, 2022
Superbly engaging detailing of the coastline of the island of Aran (off the coast of Galway on the west of Ireland), taking in geography, geology, flora, fauna, people, traditions, industries, history etc etc. Overlaid with Robinson's gently playful quest to find an interconnectedness between as many (preferably all!) of the aspects as possible. A wonderful, timeless book that fills a deep need in the human spirit (well mine anyway!). 4.5 stars rounding down cos some of the history did lapse into dry recording.
January 3, 2018
Fascinating stuff, and the mingling of science, history and poetry pretty much works all the way through. Occasionally the consciousness of place trips over into a kind of off-putting self-consciousness in the author, but that's probably just me being tired and grumpy.
February 20, 2024
A remarkable book, at once both a sprawling history and an intimate gaze into a landscape and the people that sprung from it. Poetic, introspective, and beautifully written. Best savored a little bit at a time.
September 8, 2019
Easily lost in this nature book about afar away place. Lush writing. Thank you Mr. Robinson.
October 25, 2020
Masterful.
March 17, 2021
A walk around Aran island and through its geology, history, and culture. This reprint has an introduction by Robert Macfarlane.
November 27, 2021
Wonderful enterprise, wonderful writing. Inspirational.
November 8, 2022
detailed exploration of the geology, nature and peopled history on a circuit of the coast of Inis Mor in the Aran Islands
real sense of place and history and of the bleak life lived on the island
real sense of place and history and of the bleak life lived on the island
Read
March 16, 2023Dnf
June 12, 2023
The moby dick of stones
Read
July 7, 2023I feel a great sense of accomplishment in finally finishing this book! So interesting, and yet I had such a hard time really getting in to it.
February 25, 2014
A stone classic - pardon the pun - of close-up geography. More words per square foot of island than any other book I know, and he only traced the shores. Can't wait to read volume 2 - well, maybe wait a month. Robinson (an Englishman - well, an ex-pat in that he abandoned Yorkshire for the West, but a Pat too) devotes a larger volume to the stone riddled interior of Arainn - then goes on to write 3 volumes on Connemara alone. As if single-handedly trying to make up for what British Ordnance Survey teams did to the language and local memories of a conquered nation 150 years ago. And, as the praise-begrudging Irish might concede, not a bad job that...
July 17, 2010
I have just begun this unusual book. An English author walks around the Aran island off the west coast of Ireland, narrating about the landscape, the history and local lore. He writes elegantly, and this book draws you in to the journey. Who knew?
May 10, 2013
Maybe it is the dutch translation, but I didn't like this book as much as I expected. Been twice to the Aran islands, so it was interesting to read. But the writer or translator used such long and difficult sentences that I found it hard to concentrate on the text.
August 24, 2007
True dedication to a culture and a level of detail I've never read since I first attempted to read Proust.
January 4, 2014
It requires patience, something I'm sure the author intended, but, with it, there is a lot here for a reader to dig into: geology, botany, cultural history, myth and folklore. Highly recommend.
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