Synopsis
Dublin 1907, a city of whispered rumours. A young actress begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works. Rebellious and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a girl of the inner city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. She has dozens of admirers but in the backstage of her life there is a secret.
Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled genius, the son of a once prosperous landowning family, a poet of fiery language and tempestuous passions. Yet his life is hampered by convention and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Scarred by a childhood of loneliness and severity he has long been ill, but he loves to walk the wild places of Ireland. The affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is turbulent, sometimes cruel, often tender.
Many years later, an old woman makes her way across London on the morning after a hurricane. Christmas is coming. As she wanders past bombsites and through the city's forlorn beauty, a snowdrift of memories and lost desires seems to swirl. She has twice been married: once widowed, once divorced, but an unquenchable passion for life has kept her afloat as her dazzling career has faded.
A story of love's commitment, of partings and reconciliations, of the courage involved in living on nobody else's terms, Ghost Light is a profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting novel.
Selected Quotes
"Ghost Light displays an astonishing command of voice, using tones that are both tender and powerfully emotional, with brilliant command of the period." - Colm Tóibín, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year
"absolutely brilliant – a beautifully written love story and, somehow, a chunk of Irish social and political history." - Roddy Doyle, The Guardian, Books of the Year
"I can’t think of any book I’ve read recently which has so enthralled me and worked at every single level. Ghost Light is a wonder."
Peter Carey
"As I read Ghost Light, I found myself going more and more slowly, because I didn't want to miss a single sentence. I found myself calling friends and reading passages aloud to them over the phone. This is a rare experience indeed. It is a rare and wonderful book."
Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
Author Biography
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of the novels
Cowboys and Indians (short-listed for the Whitbread Prize),
Desperadoes, The Salesman, Inishowen, Star of the Sea and Redemption Falls, as well as a number of bestselling works of non-fiction. He has also written film scripts and stage-plays including the award-winning
Red Roses and Petrol. His novel
Star of the Sea was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Neilsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy / Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.
He was recently voted ‘Irish Writer of the Decade’ by the readers of Hot Press magazine. He broadcasts a popular weekly radio diary on RTE’s Drivetime With Mary Wilson and writes regularly for The Guardian Review and The Sunday Independent. In 2009 he was the Harman Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Baruch College, the City University of New York. His most recent novel Ghost Light was published in June 2010 to rave reviews internationally and spent nine weeks as a number one Irish besteller.
Other books by Joseph O’Connor
Cowboys and Indians (1991)
True Believers (Short Stories)
Even the Olives are Bleeding: The Life and Times of Charles Donnelly (1993)
Desperadoes (1993)
The Secret World of the Irish Male (1994)
The Irish Male at Home and Abroad (1996)
Sweet Liberty: Travels in Irish America (1996)
The Salesman (1998)
Inishowen (2000)
The last of the Irish Males (2001)
Star of the Sea (2002
Redemption Falls (2007)
Ghost Light (2010)