In I Could Read the Sky, a tender and evocative book by writer Timothy O’Grady and photographer Steve Pyke, first published in 1997, an old man lies alone and sleepless in Kentish Town, London, where he recalls scenes from his past. Born in the west of Ireland, he remembers the cottage where he grew up surrounded by neighbours and family, and the grinding poverty that led him to leave, alongside scores of others, to seek work on English potato fields and building sites. In England, he shakes off the day’s exertions in pubs where there is music (he is an accomplished accordionist) and dancing, and where he meets Maggie, the love of his life. But tragedy strikes soon after they marry.
O’Grady is the narrator, whose tone – much like his spare, poetic prose – is reflective, mournful, imbued with the loneliness of a man who is haunted by all he has left behind. The book’s title is taken from a list of skills relayed by our protagonist: “I could mend nets. Thatch a roof. Build stairs. Make a basket from reeds … I could dance sets. Read the sky.”
O’Grady wrote the novel after seeing Pyke’s stark yet beautiful pictures of working-class Irish life. But in the absence of those photographs, the audio version comes with a wonderful score created and performed by the Irish fiddler Martin Hayes. “Music happens inside you,” says the old man. “It can bring you the past. It can bring you things that you do not know. It can bring you into the moment that is happening. It can bring you the cure.”
• I Could Read the Sky is available via Unbound, 3hr 43min
Further listening
The Seven Sisters
Lucinda Riley, Macmillan, 18hr 11min
The first in the Seven Sisters series finds a group of siblings gathering at their childhood home on the shores of Lake Geneva to learn that their billionaire father has died. Tuppence Middleton reads.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin, Penguin Audio, 13hr 52min
Jennifer Kim and Julian Cihi narrate this unusual story of two college students who reconnect years after they met as children, and who form a bond through their love of gaming.
