Walking with Ghosts : A Memoir
Author(s): Gabriel Byrne
A stunning memoir by Gabriel Byrne, the award-winning star of over eighty films, Walking with Ghosts is an exquisite portrait of an Irish childhood and a remarkable journey to Hollywood and Broadway success
As a young boy growing up on the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working-class parents and the eldest of six children, he harboured the desire to become a priest. When he was eleven, Byrne crossed the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. After being expelled four years later, he quickly returned to his native city. There, he took odd jobs as messenger boy and factory labourer in order to get by. In his spare time he visited the cinema, where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he began to imagine a life beyond the grey world of 1960s Ireland.
He revelled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin’s streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollections of childhood in a now almost-vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.
Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies.
Review(s):
“[Byrne] writes with much more depth than the typical celebrity memoirist, accessing some of Heaney’s earthiness and Joyce’s grasp of how Catholic guilt can shape an artist. . . Possesses a winning dry humor that reads as authentically humble. . .Byrne is an impressive chronicler. A melancholy but gemlike memoir, elegantly written and rich in hard experience.”
“He succeeds in spades here, offering a gripping memoir that is anything but typical Hollywood, a text imbued with rich, literary language and beautiful turns of phrase. . . . Like his work on Broadway and in Hollywood, his writing invokes a beautiful sense of nostalgia, melancholy and vulnerability.”
“Make no mistake about it: Walking with Ghosts is a masterpiece. A book that will wring out our tired hearts. It is by turns poetic, moving, and very funny. You will find it on the shelf alongside other great Irish memoirs including those by Frank McCourt, Nuala O'Faolain and Edna O’Brien.”
“Actor Byrne channels his fellow countrymen and Ireland’s literary masters — Beckett, Heaney, Joyce, Yeats — to create an exceptionally lyrical and expressive memoir about his childhood and early career… Bracingly revealing about his struggle with alcoholism, achingly passionate about the Ireland of his youth, and piercingly frank about his acting life, Byrne is a vivid, evocative, and sumptuously compelling memoirist.”
“Walking With Ghosts is lavish with lyricism, but presents a pretty unvarnished version of its author… The book is also a conscious departure: stylistically ambitious, purposefully (and successfully) so.”
“A dreamy book, lyrical, filled with images of things that slipped by and have faded. He writes passionately about his first love and hilariously about his early fame as an actor.”
“Walking with Ghosts is exquisite. This book feels like the culmination of a long literary career and not the debut of a famous actor. Byrne makes himself fully vulnerable while in total command of language and form. There is great truth and great beauty in this close examination of a life and the passage of time. I’ve never read a memoir so raw and honest and literary and absolutely, staggeringly brilliant.”
“The wonder of this memoir is its unembellished truth. It is written by a man whose amazing story is the stuff of literature."
“In pared down prose both luminous and raw, Walking with Ghosts is about first things—parents, siblings, loves, heartbreaks, parts, failure, success, loss, but most of all it is a tender embrace of the past as Byrne discovers and accepts the truth of who he is in all his human struggle to be at peace with oneself and one’s imperfections. In a voice full of warmth, compassion, humor and wonder, Byrne steps into the role of writer with the same assurance, humility and intensity that he brings to his acting roles. More, this debut marks a welcome new voice that blends memory and imagination for an all-encompassing and wise memoir that reads like a novel.”
“Walking with Ghosts is a book about grief, loss, the secrets that we keep and the joys of creativity. It’s also about dealing with addiction and the vertigo of fame. We always knew Gabriel Byrne was an astonishing actor but now we also know what an elegant, intelligent and dignified writer he is.”
O, The Oprah Magazine 55 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021
ISBN: 9781443465090