Customer Reviews

On the Edge of a Dream: The Women of Celtic Myth and Legend

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This book, "On the Edge of a Dream," was by far the best Celtic mythology book I have ever read. For once, there is an author out there discussing the ancient Celtic peoples who is neither dry and too scholary nor too New Agey. Jennifer Heath approaches each one of these fifteen stories with wit and humor. I highly reccomend this book to anyone who enjoyed "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by another author, this book is in the same vein. The only negative thing I found about "On The Edge of Dream" was that it was too short. I wanted her to continue to tell even more stories.

Jennifer Heath has covered new territory within the pages of her most fantastic book. Instead of penning another tired re-retelling of the Christian version of the 15 tales included among the pages, she dared to employ the combination of ten plus years of research with imagination and remembrance.

On The Edge Of Dream spotlights the women of the Celts as equals among their male counterparts, both in their ferocity and their love, but never in a feministic tone. And yes, a couple of the characters in her book actually engage(never explicitly) in that most wonderful of humane motion...sex!

If you're at all interested in gaining a new perspective on Celtic tradition, read this book, you will not be disappointed.

This book was just awesome! I couldn't put it down. She was factual and gave the reader a chance to enter another world. The 15 stories in this book are of no compare. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know about the women of Celtic myth. She told the stories with such magic I felt as if I were there.

I love Celtic legends, especially stories about goddesses and heroines. Unfortunately, the Celtic legends have been revised, sanitized, and edited over the centuries to the point that sometimes they can seem very dry--as if all the spirit has been sucked out of them.

And then there's _On the Edge of Dream_.

Jennifer Heath draws on the oral tradition of stories handed down by her mother, plus written sources, blending different versions of stories together into an enchanting brew. She doesn't just retell the stories the way we've always heard them, she spices them up, adds a dash of feminism here and there, and breathes new emotional life into them. I cry every time I read the scene where Pwyll, lacking the words to apologize to Rhiannon, simply carries her into the court, the way she has carried all visitors for the past seven years.

You'll especially like this if you liked Caitlin Matthews' _Celtic Love_. Both are collections of old Celtic stories told with new-found emotional "oomph" by women with true bardic talent.

Jennifer Heath is a storyteller in the ancient tribal sense: someone who, while faithful to tradition, makes the old stories fresh and new. Irish mythology has suffered more than most from being sanitized, dogmatized, and politicized; she recreates the myths believably as reflections of a world view and moral sense that are worlds away from their 19th-century redactors'. And the tales are well told, too: there's broad humor and wrenching tragedy; the courtship of the goddess Fand by the wily sea-god Manaan Mac Lir is delightful; and I was tickled to see Cuchulain, who tends to be "chevalier sans peur et sans reproche" in the "orthodox" version of the myths, depicted as a faithless and not overly bright jock. My only criticism: I wish the book were longer; I was sorry when it ended!

Not as moving to me as it was to the rest of these reviewers, and I bought it on their recommendations. I wished it had been. She has written a very creative creation of a Celtic creation myth using the Dagda. (Celts had no creation myth that still exists today.) She has a very melodic way of getting words onto paper.

The author tells these mythic stories with an immediacy that puts you back in the past and then outside of time altogether. The writing in these stores is so rhythmic you can dance to them.

The 15 wonderful stories in this book were written with the unique combination of many years of research and stories remembered from childhood (the authors mother & grandmother use to tell her these stories as bedtime tales). This "pearl" of a book dares to go where few other Celtic re-tellings have gone. It portrays the women as equal among their male counterparts in both mental strength and wit, but never in a superior way. And yes, the characters in this book also engage (never explicitly) in that most wonderful of human pleasures--sex!

The colorful stories within the pages of this book will stir the emotions and leave one laughing and crying, angry and joyous, troubled and relieved and always, always yearning for more.

I truly hope that Jennifer Hearth puts pen to paper once more so that we may be delighted a second time around. To you Jennifer Hearth I say BRAVO!