Walking with Ghosts

“A masterpiece . . . poetic, moving, and very funny . . . 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 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 1960s Ireland.

In this memoir he revels in the theater and poetry of Dublin’s streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, and recounts his decision to join an amateur theater group—a decision that would change his life forever. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.

“[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. . . . a winning dry humor that reads as authentically humble.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A gripping memoir that is anything but typical Hollywood . . . evokes a beautiful sense of nostalgia, melancholy and vulnerability.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“A real writer, a born storyteller.” —The Washington Post

“A dreamy book . . . He writes passionately about his first love and hilariously about his early fame as an actor.” —Irish Times