In Tied to the Wind a young girl tries to tether herself to a life that keeps becoming unfixed. Itosha's family move from Ireland to Southern Africa and back again is exacerbated by alcoholism, racism, war and the complicity of colonial privilege. She tells her ultimately hopeful story, back and forth, in short vivid episodes.
In the excerpts McGlinchey reads for Book on One, Itosha astutely observes the distance between hers and her siblings’ lives, and that of her parents as she watches them take off into the night in their finery.
She catches her aloneness and that of other children managing moving house too often, being sent away to boarding school as very young children, parents abandoning their families for affairs, alcoholic parents and parents who take their own lives.
Itosha makes some sense of her parents through her grandmother in Mayo. She navigates what it is to be a teenager in a youth club in Castletroy in Limerick and in her uncle’s dancehall in Donegal, before eventually glimpsing the freedom of her first independent adventure as she takes off for Paris with her cousin, Freya and then being in Paris on their own terms.
About her book Afric McGlinchey calls up Salman Rushdie, who said that a book is a version of the world. She goes on: 'Though I’m an incessant reader, I’ve never found a book that tells a version of my kind of upbringing. My allegiance is always to Ireland, the country of my birth, but a piece of my heart belongs to Africa too, where I grew up. I had to honour the memories I’ve carried with me. So, I wrote Tied to the Wind.’
Tied to the Wind is published by Broken Sleep. Hear all Book on One episodes here.
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