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    Walking with Ghosts
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    Walking with Ghosts
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    Walking with Ghosts
    Ebook247 pages3 hours

    Walking with Ghosts

    By Gabriel Byrne

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A highly anticipated memoir by Gabriel Byrne, the award-winning star of over 80 films, Walking with Ghosts is an exquisite portrait of an Irish childhood and a remarkable journey to Hollywood and Broadway success.

    “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.” —Colum McCann

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrove Press
    Release dateJan 12, 2021
    ISBN9780802157140
    Author

    Gabriel Byrne

    Gabriel Byrne was born in Dublin and has starred in over eighty films for some of the cinema’s leading directors. He won a Golden Globe for his performance on HBO’s In Treatment. On Broadway he won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and has been nominated twice for the Tony Award. He lives in Manhattan and Maine.

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    Reviews for Walking with Ghosts

    4.5/5

    38 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Beautifully written, achingly honest. To think that so much darkness dwells inside that gorgeous face and sublime actor. Ireland, and growing up Catholic will do it to you.
    • 5/5
      Full disclosure: I am of Irish descent! I am a sucker for a lilting, lyrical Irish accent! Nonetheless, this memoir, narrated by the author is marvelous. Be sure to listen to the audio version. I laughed out loud, cried, cringed, and ached. This is the story of a boy who had a rich inner life. The anecdotes from his acting career are few and fantastic, but this memoir is anything other than a Hollywood tell-all Byrne welcomes the reader/listener into the inner life of a boy, becoming a man. It felt honest, and consequently possibly universal. Not being a boy, I cannot be sure. If this narration is a performance, let it be so. Bravo, Mr. Byrne. The world is a better place for your memoir.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      He starts his memoir with a then and now look at the Dublin neighborhood in which he had spent his youth. His Catholic schooling, Christian Brothers, his first Communion with all the pagentry, pomp, and hidden cruelties. I found relate to both, the neighborhood I grew up in is much changed and I may have attended Catholic school in the states but much was familiar. There is also some amusing incidents anecdotes. The Dublin he carries will never leave him just as my old neighborhood will not leave me.In between we learn of various endeavors, failings and his start in acting. Past and future. What is so touching is his total honesty, his openers and self deprecating humor. He makes clear that some of the sadness, griefs in his life will never leave him, he carries this wherever he goes. A man I would love to meet, he never appears arrogant but grateful for the opportunities he has been given. A terrific story and one I wish I had listened to as I've read he is his own narrator.

      1 person found this helpful