Staring at Lakes
Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness – through faith, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease remained.
When he was fifty-eight, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy. Here, in this beautifully written memoir, he talks with openness and honesty about his journey: leaving the priesthood when he was in his thirties, settling in Leitrim with his artist wife, the depression that eventually overwhelmed him, and how, ultimately, he found a way out of the dark, by accepting the fragility of love and the importance of now.
Staring at Lakes started out as a book about depression. And then became a story about growing old, the essence of love and marriage – and sitting in cars, staring at lakes.
About the Author
Michael Harding is an author and playwright. His creative chronicle of ordinary life in the Irish midlands is published as a weekly column in The Irish Times. He has written numerous plays for the Abbey Theatre, including Una Pooka, Misogynist and Sour Grapes, and has published three novels, Priest, The Trouble with Sarah Gullion and Bird in the Snow as well as three bestselling memoirs, Staring at Lakes, which won three BGE Irish Book awards, Hanging with the Elephant and Talking to Strangers and the bestselling On Tuesdays I’m a Buddhist.
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