There are some books so potent that you have a photographic memory of where you read them. Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places is among those: I can’t think of it without thinking of a hazy September week in Southwold, where we ended up sleeping in a house that had previously belonged to P.D. James. The whole place was Elizabethan and beamy - the kind of houses that make me feel at home, because they remind me of the one I grew up in - and the bathroom was covered in wallpapered blue swans. In its large, gurgling bath I sat, salt-slick from the sea, and warmed up with Thin Places, an aching memoir of place and displacement.

Kerri and I are publishing sisters of sorts: we’ve entrusted our words to Canongate, the same artist painted the covers of Cacophony of Bone, Kerri’s forthcoming book about time, lockdown and listlessness, and Why Women Grow. We are bound in this way but also many more: she has always been very generous towards my work and, in recent months, sent me long and heart-soaring messages about motherhood and writing. They have been a bolster. I’m so pleased she was up for taking over this week’s savourites.

I’m Kerri ní Dochartaigh, a mother and writer from the North-West of Ireland, now living in Clare with my family. As well as these, I make and mend; sow and grow; swim and walk. My first book, Thin Places, was published by in Spring 20201. Cacophony Of Bone is out in less than a fortnight. 

 I wrote Cacophony Of Bone the winter and spring before last, living in a barn on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, so for this week’s savourites I’d like to shine a light on that beautiful, creative, magical part of these islands …Oh Kernow, how we love you!...