Castles & Ruins

Having been to Ireland numerous times and also interested in biographies, I was intrigued by the description of this book. The author and her family travel to Ireland so that she can see the places that her family had lived and visited when she was a child. Descriptions of Irish places mixed with passages from a book that her mother had written make for an interesting read. There were some parts of the book that were a little slow I thought, but the book makes me want to go back to Ireland again!

A detailed memoir that takes place in Ireland on an extended stay with her writer parents when Rue was a young girl. It focused mainly on her parents turbulent yet ultimately loving relationship. The book felt a bit drawn out to me and I think it could have been more succinct without damage to the integrity of the book.

Castles and Ruins is a book about a quest. Rue Matthiessen, her husband and their 10-year-old son leave their home on Long Island to travel to Ireland. She is on a quest to re-experience and make peace with memories and feelings from her childhood. To do this she decides to return to the place, near a castle in Ireland called Annaghkeen, where she spent a summer with her stepfather and mother, in 1965, when she was seven. When she departs on the trip—40 years later—she’s not even sure she’ll be able to find Annaghkeen.

I confess I decided to read this book because her stepfather was Peter Matthiessen. I have read Matthiessen’s famous book, The Snow Leopard, many times. That book too is about a quest, a 2-month long trek Matthiessen goes on in in 1973 to the Himalayas with a wildlife biologist friend. They hope to get a rare glimpse of a snow leopard in the wild. Matthiessen also hopes the trip will deepen his commitment to zen Buddhism.

In The Snow Leopard Matthiessen briefly mentions the recent death from cancer of his wife, Deborah Love, herself a writer, and Rue Matthiessen’s mother. And he briefly mentions his anguish not only about his wife’s death but also about having to leave behind his 10-year old son Alex, so soon after his mother’s death, in order to go on the trek. He also gives us short glimpses of the difficult relationship he had with Deborah.

But you’d never know from reading that book that Matthiessen had a daughter.

Unlike her stepfather, who failed to find his snow leopard, Rue Matthiessen does find Annaghkeen and does find a way to be at peace with her mother’s greater devotion to writing than to her daughter. And she finds a way to be at peace with her mother’s loyalty to a husband whose brilliance and fame—and his deep commitment to zen—were really no excuse for his only fitful loyalty to her.

Her parents did not ruin her life.

Castles and Ruins is must reading if you want to know what it is like to grow up in a household where both parents are more involved with their own projects than with their own children.

It is must reading if you want to see a side of Peter Matthiessen that I don’t think you’ll find in any of his books.

And because Rue provides lovely descriptions of the people she and her family meet and the places they stay and see on their way to Annaghkeen—echoing the best passages from The Snow Leopard—her book also is must reading even if you have no interest in Peter Matthiessen or his family.
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Note: In the front matter of The Snow Leopard are two spreads containing seemingly hand-drawn maps that allow the reader to follow the route of the trek described in that book. I think Castles and Ruins would benefit from having similar maps in its front matter.

This is an ethereal book about the author’s questto search for her past in Ireland. She goes in search of her enigmatic and brilliant parents, together with her husband and ten- year old son. I was interested in this book because Peter Matthiesson’s The Snow Leopard was all the rage when I was young and I bought it again years ago. Peter Matthieson was Rue’s step-father but he brought her up. Deborah, Rue’s beautiful, dreamy mother had a hard time with him because of his receiving all the attention even though she wrote beautifully as well, and his affairs. She died young of cancer. I found it a bit hard to be sympathetic with either parent though, because they were self-absorbed,inadvertently cruel and involved in their own projects. At one stage, like typically artistic, psychodelic parents of the ‘70s, they floated about on LSD most of the time. Deborah was even going to give it to her young daughter as an experiment! Luckily, she decided against it, probably because Peter saw some sense. I liked this book but it was a bit long. However, it was perfect reading for me at a terribly sad time in my life.

I have only been to Ireland once, unfortunately, but I went to a few places mentioned in the book. The luminous descriptions certainly made me want to go back!

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.