Book Review by Jo Wilson
Saskia Levy Rodgers, S’Tory Island, Amazon Digital Services LLC – Kdp, 2024.
ISBN: 9798326578136
RRP: AU$32.11; also in Kindle, $7.57
There is little in this world that gives me greater temporal joy than good wordplay. I felt privileged to get my digital hands on this original little treasure, S’Tory Island. Better than just a clever title, Saskia Levy Rodgers has assembled the stories of Tory Island into the following categories: the lore of Tory, a love-song to the island she calls home, and the life-history of the community. It’s an 80-page long treasury in which we travel the tiny island, 12km off the coast of Donegal, and are welcomed into a rare intimacy between the author, the island and her children.
The text which is also illustrated vividly with paintings by the author opens with a particular intention:
This little book is by no means exhaustive; it is not an encyclopedia or a dictionary. It is simply a collection of memories from islanders, thoughts, ideas, and hopes…
She says she hopes to inspire the reader to be fascinated with their own folklore and traditions and to ensure that we may research our own stories finding a new layer of ‘wisdom and secrets’. The book is very well served by this frame, and the images add to our imagining of the deep waters, and mystery that surrounds this island for many. I knew very little about it prior to this micro-education. The portrait of Colmcille is captivating. Firstly, he’s a saint you don’t often see in imagery and the artist – showing only a diagonal of his face pitches the tone perfectly. For all that you see – there is still so much unseen.
Becoming acquainted with where the author is taking us, we learn about times before the ferry to the mainland when islanders really weren’t that perturbed by being cut off from the mainland or conveniences – there were so many farmers on the island that they were a much more self-sufficient people. They grew their own food, found a local substitute for tobacco and might have travelled to Tír Mór only once a year, to Greens in Falcarragh for new school shoes. It’s not a backward-looking book though. Protecting, celebrating and sharing life on the island in the present day seems like an important reason for the book’s creation too. Recalling the island’s experience of significant historical events reminds us of its endurance, ‘beside the lighthouse, there is that giant hole filled with water and rust. It is a deep crater created by a bomb that accidentally fell from a plane during that war on the island. Was it a German plane, a British one, or an American one? No idea… .
Closer to the here and now we are told about the early ‘80’s on Tory when islanders had to ‘campaign fiercely’ to continue to live on the island:
We had no electricity, only one or two hours in the evening, no running water, no gas even… The Government had no idea what to do with our island, they were planning to turn it into a high-security jail or a military base. Worrying indeed as the promise of council houses and new life on the mainland – a place anyone with health problems would be better connected. I remember a man telling how it broke his heart to leave Tory, but after a night spent holding his sick young child waiting for some transport to the hospital, he couldn’t wait any longer.
You can imagine the viability projections sitting on a government office desk and how poorly things would stack up for the inhabitants of the island. We are given some information about the character of islanders in the face of such a challenge, “as usual with Tory, the unusual way is the way to go. In order to get attention from the Irish State and Europe, islanders started painting, took part in various singing and cultural competitions, and wrote dramas. With Art, optimism, and a good dose of faith in miracles, they grabbed the brushes, accordions, and dance steps to get a mike on the world scene: ‘Big developments started, we got electricity, running water, even if it’s still not drinkable…’
The learnings from this seem to be recorded to feed the courage of generations to come. The voice from the author in this vein sometimes comes across as though she is teaching her children directly. This is an example of where it works best.
We can already notice how the sea is getting angrier, the waves bigger. I suppose those might be effects of climate change they’re talking about everywhere. You will surely have to invent something new in the future, and you will.
Myths and legends of the island are told on the assumption that we know the main fare (a wider body of mythical and legendary material) well. I for one appreciate this. Saskia Levy Rogers does not feel the need for another take on King Conor and Queen Maeve, but offers instead news of a little-known pirate named Balor, the people of Sidhe and their three days of devilment and a Big Seal that still poses a threat. Colmcille and Lugh are included but only insofar as their story is intertwines with Tory Island. There are plenty of texts on those characters as wider topics and the author trusts us to explore them for ourselves. The history of kings and queens in Ireland is included but she limits the tale to how Tory once had their own royalty and that currently the position is vacant. The author spares us a retelling of stories we know well and saves us from the loss of what we don’t know we don’t know in this regard. It’s as if the author asks, ‘can I tell you something you don’t know about Irish culture from mysteries and stories kept on Tory?’ She saves us from the loss of what we don’t know we don’t know. We go on a storied walk past the monuments of the island, the Tau Cross, the Round Tower, a Torpedo and the Lighthouse, each prompting little histories and wonders near at hand – like the St Patrick’s Day traditions today and stories from farther back – like how islanders fought off British invasion, and the time an elephant washed up on shore and a bomb ended up under one inhabitant’s bed!
The constancy of focus and the dedication the author has for her subject are unwavering but sometimes the direction and tone left me trying to find my place. The stories are linked by the Island itself, but the shift from reading about author helping her own child to grasp the island’s history and peculiarities, and informing a sympathetic outsider like me curious to know more about life on the island can be a little uneasy, a tad awkward. It’s like many strands too loosely (confusingly?) tied together. Perhaps that’s what you get when you collect the varied experiences and memories of a community. Staying true to the intention of the work – the author is not heavy-handed in what should be drawn from what she has collected, if anything, the direction – who the author is writing the book to and for is too wide and inconsistent.
Stories about the practicalities of living on the island past and present are those I most enjoyed – the window of travel necessitating an actual window – weather forecasts go only so far. Remarkable inclusions so out of the ordinary – the Singer sewing machine the author uses was inherited from her grandmother who came by it after a ship called The California ran aground in a storm in 1914. She relishes the craft of repurposing something she learned from her grandmother from an early age.
There is a standout chapter on the author’s son and his relationship with the moon: the Irish word for autism (uathachas) which literally means loneliness or solitude… and how it really doesn’t quite fit. The author states that ‘even if Sean can do a lot on his own, he is also seeking company in his own quiet way. The way he sits next to me, his mum, and siblings, not saying a word, just being there, enjoying being together.’ She goes on to say how he is very affectionate child: ‘[h]e makes me think that often we speak too much, we think too much, when we should remain silent, just here and now, living the moment, enjoying the company. ‘ I too think quiet people are often misunderstood as being contented to be so. Like Sean, I know many who seem reserved but who would love a way into their solitude for others or a way out for themselves – I really appreciated the author’s insights on this, a subject she clearly has a deep care for.
There is an honour in being privy to the riches passed between parent and child and it’s not something you expect to find in a travel-based book. Neither is it something you expect to find in a book of Irish myths and legends but it’s the kind of layer that the Irish privilege you with when you have a seat at their table. They share family lore, lessons about life in their particular patch of drumlins or acres. I think that’s what we have to thank the author for here – a seat at the table, a walk through the parish, a trip to somewhere we all sometimes ache for (Ireland) and yet somewhere new – an adventure, a something new about somewhere we thought we knew exhaustively. For the diaspora and the many (Irish) Celtophiles, this book is a delicious composite dish of adventure with a modern-day family along a gusty storied shore.
Jo Wilson
Jo is a dedicated reader/writer originally from Ireland and now living in Victoria, Australia.
Tinteán 