Said the Dead
Ni Ghriofa has created a fascinating literary territory that is entirely her own. In her new book, Said the Dead, a lyric fusion of biography, ghost story, memoir and poetry, she conjures fuller lives for several women named in the casebooks of a defunct asylum ... Its stirring aliveness comes from Ni Ghriofa’s writing, the compressed lyricism and depth of feeling she brings to every scene ... Extraordinary ... Vivid.
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Said the Dead returns to the crossroads of history, fiction and memoir. Admirers of the German writer W.G. Sebald will recognize the terrain, but Ms. Ní Ghríofa’s path is untrodden and revelatory ... Turns out to be a ghost story and an ingeniously constructed hall of mirrors ... The author’s passionate chronicle opens the cage, granting those within both voice and substance. That is her book’s greatest achievement.
An intimately researched but also wildly imaginative study of lives (mostly female) lived and often concluded during the hospital’s first 70 years or so ... [An] extraordinary formal and ethical force.
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