Book Review: Walking With Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne

About:
Walking With Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne is a memoir by the famous Irish actor. Mr. Byrne is an award-winning actor, who has been in over 80 productions.

• 208 pages
• Publisher : Grove Press
  
• Language : English
• ISBN-10 : 0802157122

My rat­ing for Walking With Ghosts  — 5
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Thoughts:
I did not think I’d like this book as much as I did.

When I started reading the memoir it seemed pretentious, as if the author was trying to be overly poetic, stylistic, and overly flourished. After a few pages though, I started to appreciate the prose and the memories it brought forth. It’s extremely difficult to write memories of your life on the page and have readers be in your head, this book succeeded with polish and heart.

The narrative is unique, yet works wonderfully for the memoir. Mr. Byrne tells his life story in short vignettes, each one from beginning to end, similar to Dubliners by James Joyce. The reader can clearly see how something that occurred in his childhood in Dublin, Ireland has later on impacted a decision he made in his life. Something which occurs to all of us, but is really difficult to capture, especially with such grace and elegance. This means that the narrative is not told in a linear fashion, but it works.

I enjoyed taking this outstanding journey together with Mr. Byrne down memory lane. I’ve enjoyed the descriptions of “his” Dublin, the colorful characters from his working class neighborhood, and his struggles and success. The little stories he tells about his behind the scenes experience (not many, but enough) do more to serve the giants of English thespians than himself, but does let us, the readers, know more about the author and, once again, how something small and insignificant to one person had a huge impact on one’s future, probably unbeknownst to the first.

Walking With Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne works on many levels, the mediation on fame and the traps it comes with, the ghosts of his childhood, his career, and his personal life. The memoir is well written, stark, vivid and extremely introspective. One gets a feeling that writing it was some sort of catharsis for Mr. Byrne, and as a result we, the readers, get to know him unfiltered.

Buy Walking With Ghosts Amazon.com*
More Books by Gabriel Byrne*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free
*Ama­zon links point to an affiliate account