I Could Read the Sky - by Timothy O'Grady (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

With a foreword by John Berger

I Could Read the Sky is a collaboration, in the shape of a lyrical novel, between writer Timothy O'Grady and photographer Steve Pyke.

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

Review Quotes

Reviews from the UK edition

"I hope thousands of new readers find themselves keeping a copy under the pillow, unable to let it out of their sight even for the hours of darkness." Annie Proulx

"The photographs are a reminder of everything which is beyond the power of words... And the words recall what can never be made visible in any photograph." John Berger

"I felt so overwhelmed, so exhilarated by this beautiful book, one of the most beautiful I have read in years. I remember when I read Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe - I was about seventeen or eighteen - I was so moved, I just bawled. I felt that same feeling reading this book. It's a novel, and at the same time it's a poem." Studs Terkel

"The experience of Irish emigration uniquely and powerfully illuminated." Mark Knopfler

"Wow. I Could Read The Sky was a masterpiece. One of my 'special books' as a graduate student, and I still keep it close, in that grey-green Harvill pb edition. The Harvill list of the 1990s was insanely good. Always held I Could Read The Sky in a triangle in my mind with The Rings of Saturn and A Fortunate Man." Robert Macfarlane

"O'Grady's novel is imbued with humour, lightening its load of suffering with laughter, and while pulling at the heart's strings, a song of hope emerges." Suzan Sherman, Bomb

"It reminds us of a great and unforgivable truth - our cities are built on the loneliness of migrant workers, and their great sadness persists down the generations." Kevin Barry

"What Pyke and O'Grady have done is read out imagination." Dermot Healy

"If the words tell the story of the voiceless, the bleak lovely photographs show their faces. Fiction rarely gets as close to the messy, glorious truth as do memories and photographs. This rare novel dares to use both." Charlotte Mendelson, TLS

"There is a rare, fragile species of novel that draws its beauty as much from what it leaves out as from what it puts in. This is one of those: a stark heartbreaking story of an Irish labourer's life in England. "It has been made in the dark," says John Berger in his preface, lit from within by a cloudy, uncertain glow. Steve Pyke's arresting black-and-white photographs of Irish faces and scenes are scattered throughout, as haunting a record of lives lived under the yoke of time as the novel itself." Carrie O'Grady, Guardia

"A lament for the cruelty of diaspora strained through such pure understated language you're surprised the words themselves are not weeping on the page." Bloomsbury Review

"A fine, evocative, engaging act of storytelling that captures the essence of a displaced life for Irish exiles ... a work of literary genius." Gerry Adams

About the Author

Timothy O'Grady was born in Chicago and has lived in Ireland, London, Spain and Poland. He is the author of four works of non-fiction and three novels. His novel Motherland won the David Higham award for the best first novel in 1989. His novel I Could Read the Sky, a collaboration with photographer Steve Pyke, won the Encore Award for best second novel of 1997. I Could Read the Sky was filmed and also travelled as a stage show. His most recent novel is Light, published in 2004.

In the 1970s, Steve Pyke was a punk rocker with an itch to do something more singular. He borrowed a friend's camera and since that time has photographed for every major magazine. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in many international permanent collections.

Storyteller, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, John Berger (1926-2017) was one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. His many books include Ways of Seeing; the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours; Here Is Where We Meet; the Booker Prize-winning novel G; Hold Everything Dear; the Man Booker-longlisted From A to X; and A Seventh Man.