Staring at Lakes: A Memoir of Love, Melancholy and Magical Thinking

Description

'I was fifty-two, and I was desperate to leave. To get away. And it was all because of the dishwasher. She would fill it to the brim. She would squash the dishes in so tight that they got damaged. They chipped around the edges. She said it wasn't the dishwasher that chipped the plates. They got chipped because I didn't put them in correctly. So I started turning on the machine when it was half full. That way nothing would get chipped. She'd come home before I had emptied it, and she'd open the door and say, 'You shouldn't put the dishwasher on until it's full.' So I decided to leave. A man must have his own dishwasher. A man must be free.' When Michael Harding was fifty-eight, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep, paralysing depression. Here, in his candid and beautifully written memoir, he talks openly about his journey through illness, middle-age and marriage. He tells of the sense of failure in leaving the priesthood, of settling in Leitrim with his artist wife, finding his voice as a writer, and the deep melancholy which consumed him in the months during and following his illness. R>He describes the slow course of his recovery, journeying towards an unexpected sense of peace and redemption - found through the acceptance of vulnerability, the sustaining love of his partner, and, most of all, by recognising the importance of now.

Michael Harding was born 1953 in County Cavan. He is an Irish short-story writer, novelist, and playwright and member of Aosdana, the National Academy for Creative Artists. He has published three novels - Priest, The Trouble With Sarah Gullion, Bird in the Snow - and numerous plays and is a columnist with The Irish Times. Michael has worked in theatre as an actor, director and writer. He is most widely known as the author of such plays as Strawboys, Una Pooka, Misogynist, Hubert Murray's Widow, Sour Grapes, and Amazing Grace, all produced by the Abbey Theatre, and more than a dozen other plays for leading Irish Companies, including The Kiss, Talking Through his Hat, and Swallow. He has directed for The Abbey Theatre, The Project Arts Centre, and Red Kettle, and has worked as a performer with many distinguished theatre companies such as Siamsa Tire, Blue Raincoat, The Abbey Theatre and Gare St. Lazare. He was Writer in Association with The National Theatre in 1993, and Writer Fellow at Trinity College in 2001, and has received numerous awards for his theatre work, including The Stewart Parker Award, The Bank of Ireland RTE Award, and Best Male Performer at Dublin Theatre Fringe Festival. His most recent work The Tinker's Curse toured Ireland in 2011, and STARING AT LAKES, a memoir is scheduled for publication in 2013.

'Hilarious, and tender, and mad, and harrowing, and wistful, and always beautifully written. A wonderful book' * Kevin Barry, author of City of Bohane * 'This frank and unflinching memoir offers a fascinating insight into the mind of the author of two of the finest Irish novels of the eighties' * Pat McCabe, author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto * 'This memoir grabs you from the outset and holds you right to the end. Harding traverses the human soul and excavates its deepest secrets. His language sings. Extraordinary' * Deirdre Purcell, author of Pearl and Diamonds and Holes in My Shoes * 'It's rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional involvement, and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded.' * Sunday Times * I read this book in one sitting ... it held me and wouldn't let it go -- Mary McEvoy * Irish Independent * Engaging * Irish Examiner * Compelling * Sunday Business Post * Difficult to put down * Irish Times *