The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country

4.3 | 34 ratings

Price: 17.5

Last update: 10-19-2024

About this item

From the acclaimed author of the “wonderfully funny and openhearted” (NPR) Drinking with Men comes a poignant, wrenching, and ultimately hopeful book—equal parts memoir and social history—that follows the author, after a series of tragic losses, to Northern Ireland, where she finds a path toward healing.

Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful places—and getting paid to write about it. But under the surface she was reeling from the loss of her husband and her mother—who died just one year apart. Caring for them had claimed much of her daily life in her late thirties. Mourning them would take longer.

It wasn’t until a reporting trip took her to the Northern Irish countryside that Rosie found a partner to heal with: Glenarm, a quiet seaside village in County Antrim. That first visit made such an impression she returned to make a life. This unlikely place—in a small tough country mainly associated with sectarian strife—gave her a measure of peace that had seemed impossible elsewhere.

Weaving personal narrative and social history, The Slow Road North is a moving and wise look at how a community can offer the key to healing. It’s a portrait of a complicated place at a pivotal time—through Brexit, a historic school integration, and a pandemic—and a love letter to a village, a culture, and a country.

vince

Sincera and uplifting read

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2024

It doesn't happen often, but I was fortunate enough to obtain both text and audio at the same time for The Slow Road North, and the sincerity and passion in the author's words is, ironically perhaps, a soothing respite in a country where where war and strife have been a part of daily life over and over through generations.

Author Rosie Schaap, living in New York, is widowed while in her 40s. Thirteen months into widowhood she loses her mother as well. Dealing with her twin griefs has been difficult at best. Rosie decides to make a move to a small town near Belfast, Northern Ireland as she had attended a nearby college and wanted to return to Ireland. It is in this quiet town, Glenarm, that she will laugh, cry, fall in love with local birds, make new friends and find new love. The road she is on is not an easy one, but she finds comfort in poetry and in writing.

Rosie Schaap shares local information about Northern Ire;and including the historic event of a local Catholic school finally admitting students of other faiths, particularly Protestants, which had not been done before. Many references to "The Troubles" (Catholics vs. Protestants in a country now divided) give Rosie's new life added scope as she celebrates the idea of community.
The Slow Road North is an uplifting and intuitive examination of what life can be and is not a "How To Survive Widowhood" guidebook. Rather, The Slow Road North is one woman's story of new opportunities.

Anna Morrison

Schaap's Deep Gift of Wonder from an Irish Village

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2024

In 1938, Irish Poet Willam Butler Yeats wrote in his poem Lapis Lazuli that everyone has a "tragic play" to perform in this world. James Joyce added that in our human condition "every bond is a bond to sorrow." For Rosie Schaap, her bonds of sorrow, were the death of her young husband, followed by the death of her mother. Her Slow Road North is a personal path of grieving--a path that all of us--sooner or later--must walk.
In Schaap's journey, it was a series of trips to Ireland, a country she often visited on writing assignments, where she found a voice to express her life after grief, to unwrap comfort in the stories of others who shared the pages of their tragic play. In this way, Schaap says, "I found peace." This is the same peace that Yeats found in a small statue of two Chinamen...carved in Lapis Lazuli: "All things fall and are built again/And those that build them again are gay."
In a small seaside village called Glenarm, former New York Times columnist, teacher of literature, and author of Drinking With Men, Schaap found her own Lapis Lazuli in "the eye contact, the willingness to listen, and listen well, to the stories of others' suffering: I experience, and benefit, from all of this almost every day."
Schaap writes: "Living here has transformed the way I grieve; what I had hoped for was not only a way to live with it, but to live in it--with giving it the authority to define or limit me. And Glenarm has given that to me: this village that seemed itself to be dying, where memorials appear on woodland walks, in seaside graveyards, and, most of all, in the stories that my neighbors here have shared with me, with grace."
The emphasis of this journey is that it was a "slow" road. "I know now that I was both a pessimist and a cynic." Schaap admits. "I stopped believing that wonder was still possible." She had written happiness off as "an abstraction, and a shallow one, and made instead a virtue of sadness."
Like Yeats, we stare out on the tragic scene, expecting "mournful melodies," but when we look closely at the eyes of those two Chinamen carved in stone, we see: "their eyes, their ancient glittering eyes, are gay." Schapp's book gives us the deep gift of wonder, and the virtue of gaiety.

--Anna Morrison

Canyon Rat

A meandering tale

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2024

The Slow Road North was, for me, a bit slow. I love a good memoir and was certainly drawn to the setting, but found myself skimming through this at times. It was a slow moving book that was quite beautiful, but I was craving more.
This author is a fantastic weaver of words. She paints a picture of her surroundings that is immersive. Her characters are colorful. The title is even compelling. This is a well done book.
Just don't expect to rush through it. It is indeed a meandering book, as others have stated.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Mariner books for this ARC of The Slow Road North.

Amazon Customer

Traveling to heal

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2024

I enjoyed this memoir about how Rosie found a place to live and love. Rosie Schapp was grieving the loss of her husband and mother. During her travels for her writing career she comes across a village in Ireland. The story tells the reader why she fell in love and how it helped her heal. I appreicated her honest insight into her grief.

The memoir gives us a lot of glimpses of other places she has visited and how she felt about those places. Some quite personal. I really enjoyed reading about all those places and the churches, pubs and different places she would pop in. She was a traveler not a tourist. The history and insight woven into the story made it stand out. Thank you Netgalley for the chance to review this book.

Fern Barr

Moving memoir about grief and starting over

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2024

Loved this book from start to finish. Schaap's smart yet deeply heartfelt writing flows throughout. A touching, resonant read!

Omm S

Lyrical and introspective

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2024

Thoughtful and lyrical prose, an examination of grief and restlessness without self-pity and a generous helping of self-effacing humor- all descriptions of a book that almost defies categorization. It's a love letter to her late husband, to New York, and to Ireland. Globetrotting and exploration, a life in miniature, overall a worthwhile read.

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