Home › Books › Walking with Ghosts
Walking with Ghosts
by
82/99
Critics' Rating Index
40/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
89/99
Volume of Reviews
82/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
As a young boy growing up in 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 harbored a childhood desire to become a priest. When he was eleven years old, Byrne found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, Byrne had been expelled and he quickly returned to his native city. There he took odd jobs as a messenger boy and a factory laborer 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 could begin to imagine a life beyond the grey world of 60s Ireland. He reveled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin's streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, those who spin a yarn with acuity and wit. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollection 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.
Reviews
"Walking with Ghosts dazzles with unflinching honesty, as it celebrates the exuberance of being alive to the world despite living through pain."
"I have read many biographies and autobiographies in my lifetime, but nothing compares to actor Gabriel Byrne's memoir ..."
"At the core of the book, however, is not his fame but something much darker and more elusive."
"There's little in the way of celebrity dishing, but...Byrne is an impressive chronicler of both his eager gulping and his loathing."
"Walking With Ghosts is affecting on many levels: a working-class family memoir as well as a meditation on fame and its discontents."
"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."
"Particularly heartbreaking is his account (both witnessed and imagined) of his beloved sister's mental illness ..."
"It feels torn between two editors, shifting non-chronologically from idyllic recollections of an Irish boyhood, alive with nature and church-centered performances, to sardonic stories about showbiz ..."
"Simultaneously frank and emotionally stirring, this memoir entrances."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!