Irish Elegies

"Memoir, memory, and accretive gravitational force of associative thought - in Arthur's accomplished hands, the essay becomes a mosaic of meditation, simultaneously illuminated by the singular light of an examined moment and the zodiacal light of time's broad ecliptic." - Elizabeth Dodd, Southern Humanities Review

"Arthur is a master essayist, adept at bringing his whole brain to bear on meaning-making....As I came to the end of the book, I felt as if I had been sitting at the feet of a master, learning the ways of observation and meditation, as if I had been endowed with a new power for seeing beauty in everything around me, infused with the spirit of the essay." - Patrick Madden, Ploughshares

Praise for Arthur's previous work:

"Arthur's marvelous essays get to grips, evocatively and obliquely, with ideas of ancestry, continuity, attitudes and allegiances - all in a volatile Irish context . . .Taking a wide view, as he does, he can't escape an awareness of endless complexity underlying every moment and every perception; but, far from fostering vagueness, this results in unimpeachable precision." - Times Literary Supplement

"The deliberation with which he writes recalls a woodcutter, polishing his creations until they give off a deep, burnished glow." - Belfast Telegraph

"Whatever his subject, Arthur uses language that pares away at the core of experience with a care and precision we have grown unused to, chasing away clichés of thought as well as of phrase. Even in a rare genre, he's a rare writer indeed." - The Scotsman

"Chris Arthur s essay collections should not only put him on the map as the contemporary Irish essayist, but also raise general interest in the possibilities of the essay form for our time." - Graham Good, Southern Humanities Review