Returning Light: 30 Years of Life on Skellig Michael

about one third of the way through the book, i realised that the author was using the word "light" at least 5 or 6 times on every page - It must have been present in nearly every paragraph. this turned me off the book. i couldnt pick it up and not see it. whenever i encountered the word "light" on a page, i would immediately abandon that page and move on to the next page ... etc etc... That said, i did like the ever-present underlying narative covering the day-to-day life of the birdlife. so - two strands - 1. The authors fascination / obsession with the whole 'light' thing (boring), 2. The birdlife narative (interesting and well written)

For my sons birthday so can’t pass comment really

I’ve now given up at 20% into the book. I know and love skellig Michael and was really interested to hear about somebody who stayed there for extended periods of time - there is so much material that could be written about. Instead, every chapter is the same, self indulgent and verbose repetition about light, blue sky, birds and nothing else. Boring and very disappointing

I read the introduction and got bored about "shimmering light etc".Then when I continued to read the book, it continued, very much in the same vane.I gave up after 3 chapters.

Love this book. Beautiful.

It is an extraordinary opportunity to be able to share in someone's experience of living a significantly long part of every year, for over thirty years, on Skellig Michael, a tiny remote small mountain of rock, off the coast of Ireland, often inaccessible, inhabited by monks in ancient times. A deeply spiritual place. It remains so. And that does not mean you have to be Christian to gain from it.Is it repetitive? Of course! But it is repetitive in the very best way, like walking on the same tropical beach every morning of the year and seeing how the water changes, the seaweed comes and goes, the sand moves, the shells, little crabs, the fish, the birds.... And for Robert Harris, most especially, the light. The very dwellings and prayer rooms on Skellig Michael were designed with the meaningfulness of light in mind, the light and how it moves, waxes and wanes, at different times of day and year--and how important and deeply felt that is.If you would like to read a wonderful review of this book, Margaret Renkl writes in the New York Times, that "the whole book is a poem" and outlines why. Yes, it is a poem, filled with beauty, and with drama, and all of nature. Indeed, I am so very grateful for it.It can bring calm.

I wanted to love this book. Narratives that are rich in atmosphere and rumination tend to appeal to me, and I am fascinated by Skellig Michael and other remote places where humans have struggled to carve out an existence. But the repetitive descriptions of rock and sky and birds in "Returning Light" wore on me and eventually became numbing.This book needed an editor with a sensitive but firm hand.I wondered whether the punishing sameness of Harris's observations was deliberate or unintended. Was he trying to convey, by subjecting his readers to the same conditions over and over, how immersion in a given place over a long period can play upon the senses and the psyche? Or did his writing ability and capacity for language ultimately fail him? Whatever the case, the prose, which aims for the poetic but often feels strained, is in the end too slight, limited, and enervating to do his story justice.A sharper, pared-down version of this memoir could be immensely powerful.

Returning Light is a book of affirmation: of life, of light, of body, of spirit. of nature. The author realizes rather early on that living on Skellig Michael, an island off the southwestern Irish coast, is an ineffable experience, but he tries to capture its mystery in words; thus, Harris's prose is lyrical if not poetic.As I read Returning Light, I couldn't help thinking about William Blake's verse, "Everything that is/Is holy".Harris, although he's no religious advocate, captures the holiness of Skellig Michael where a monastery was established by monks in the 6th century. Living on the island, he lives amidst transcendence. While reading his book, I sometimes felt as if I were reading a luminous Book of Hours.

Great price. Book in perfect condition. Great buy.