What is a critical evaluation of The Aran Islands?

Urged on by the poet William Butler Yeats, Synge went to the Aran islands as an antidote to the decadence of Western civilization and wrote a book about his various experiences there in the late 1890s and early 1900s.
The book is of especially interest because the Aran islands are remote, located off the west coast of Ireland, and the culture that Synge documents there has since gone away.
Synge emphasizes the differences between the culture he encounters and that of so-called civilized and industrialized Europe. In the impoverished fishing cultures of this area, cut off from much of the rest of Europe, Synge records the lives of people who still lean into superstition and folklore. For example, early on, one of his companions, Old Mourteen, talks matter-of-factly about the existence of fairies, and Syne wonders if the spiritual beauty he sees in so many women's face is due to the fairy influence.
Synge focuses his attention on what is exotic and different about these remote people, whom he says live with the "artistic beauty" characteristic of the medieval world. His description of the culture is vivid:

The kitchen itself, where I will spend most of my time, is full of beauty and distinction. The red dresses of the women who cluster round the fire on their stools give a glow of almost Eastern richness, and the walls have been toned by the turf-smoke to a soft brown that blends with the grey earth-colour of the floor. Many sorts of fishing-tackle, and the nets and oil-skins of the men, are hung upon the walls or among the open rafters; and right overhead, under the thatch, there is a whole cowskin from which they make pampooties.

Synge also provides a compelling description of the nature he encounters:

I have come to lie on the rocks where I have the black edge of the north island in front of me, Galway Bay, too blue almost to look at, on my right, the Atlantic on my left, a perpendicular cliff under my ankles, and over me innumerable gulls that chase each other in a white cirrus of wings . . .

Because Synge romanticizes the Aran islands and offers ample sensory detail, the book is a compelling read, seducing us with its beautiful prose and a picture of a life other than our own.
The book is also important because the Aran Islands continued to cast their spell on Synge and led him to write his most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World.