Ghost Light - A Novel

Joseph O'Connor

Summary

1907 Edwardian Dublin, a city of whispers and rumors. At the Abbey Theatre W. B. Yeats is working with the talented John Synge, his resident playwright. It is here that Synge, the author of The Playboy of the Western World and The Tinker's Wedding, will meet an actress still in her teens named Molly Allgood. Rebellious, irreverent, beautiful, flirtatious, Molly is a girl of the inner-city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. Witty and watchful, she has dozens of admirers, but it is the damaged older playwright who is her secret passion despite the barriers of age, class, education, and religion.Synge is a troubled, reticent genius, the son of a once prosperous landowning family, a poet of fiery language and tempestuous passions. Yet his life is hampered by conventions and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Scarred by a childhood of immense 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, and often tender. 1950s postwar London, an old woman walks across the city in the wake of a hurricane. As she wanders past bomb sites and through the forlorn beauty of wrecked terraces and wintry parks, her mind drifts in and out of the present as she remembers her life's great love, her once dazzling career, and her travels in America. Vivid and beautifully written, Molly's swirling, fractured narrative moves from Dublin to London via New York with luminous language and raw feeling. Ghost Light is a story of great sadness and joy—a tour de force from the widely acclaimed and bestselling author of Star of the Sea.

Available since: 02/01/2011.

Print length: 257 pages.

Other books that might interest you

The Life of Riley - A Memoir

Riley Sumner

Riley Sumner has always enjoyed life's simple pleasures: a hot cup of coffee on a chilly fall morning, a well-hit line drive in softball, or the awe-inspiring beauty of God's creation. In his six-plus decades on this planet, Riley has accumulated a wealth of hilarious and heartwarming stories that have long entertained his family and close friends. 
In his memoir, Riley looks back on his life through a series of 40 questions covering topics that range from childhood to adulthood, from high school football to fashion faux pas. There's even a chapter about being part of the Secret Service detail for Vice President George H.W. Bush. (Yes, seriously.) The Life of Riley is a love letter to a bygone era—when you left your doors unlocked, and kids played all day in the neighborhood—as well as a reflection on all the ways life turns out better than you ever could’ve imagined.

Show book

The Life of David Brainerd

Jonathan Edwards

Though he was orphaned at age fourteen, repeatedly struck with debilitating illnesses, and unfairly expelled from college, Brainerd allowed nothing to deter him from serving God wholeheartedly. He traveled thousands of miles by horseback across treacherous terrain to preach the gospel to remote Indians. His calling required a rugged man—he even slept outside in the cold without cover—yet he constantly displayed a gentle and meek love for people entirely different from himself. Their benefit ultimately brought about his early death at the age of twenty-nine. Like an invigorating shower, the listener will be rejuvenated by Brainerd’s life-giving devotional insights, refreshing clarity of purpose, and heartwarming preaching. This book offers not only a captivating story, but an uplifting buoy for those who are weary, distant, or discouraged.

Show book

If You Fall

Tracey Litfin

If you fall off, get straight back on again …Tracey had been told this so often as a child. Yet, two months after the horse-riding accident, Tracey was still not able to fulfil it. In fact, at that stage, she couldn’t do anything for herself. You’d think that after nearly losing her life and her abilities to live life as it was before because of the riding accident, that she’d be nervous about getting back on a horse. But her love for horses and riding was so deeply ingrained within her that she couldn’t imagine a life without it. Getting back on a horse … she was determined that she would.Beginning with her fall from a horse, Tracey takes you on her journey of healing from a brain injury that should have disabled her for life. Tracey’s strength of character, toughness, and the love and support received throughout her hospital journey and afterwards shows raw determination to not let her issues win.This is a compelling story of survival against all the odds.

Show book

Old Friends

Tracy Kidder

A Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “touching, funny and inspiring” true story of daily life in a New England nursing home (The New York Times).   Ninety-year-old Lou quit school after the eighth grade, worked for the rest of his life, and stayed with the same woman for nearly seventy years. Seventy-two-year-old Joe was chief probation officer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, holds a law degree, and has faced the death of a son and the raising of a mentally challenged daughter. Now, the two men are roommates in a nursing home. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, the two become close friends.   Focusing on these two men as well as introducing us to the other aging residents of Linda Manor in Northampton, Massachusetts, literary journalist Tracy Kidder examines the sorrows and joys of growing older and the universal struggle to find meaning in the face of mortality. From the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award–winning author of The Soul of a New Machine, this is an extraordinary look inside an often-hidden world.   “As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the best-selling Among Schoolchildren, Kidder reveals his extraordinary talent as a storyteller by taking the potentially unpalatable subject of life in a nursing home and making it into a highly readable, engrossing account.” —Library Journal   “Rich detail and true-to-the-ear dialogue let the brave and determined elderly speak for themselves—and for the continually surprising potential of the human spirit.” —Kirkus Reviews

Show book

Behind the Fireplace - Memoirs...

Andrew Scott, Grietje Okma Scott

As World War 2 progressed, the Okma family took six Jewish refugees into their house, hiding them in a secret room behind their fireplace. The youngest daughter, Kieks, joined the Resistance, delivering illegal newspapers, guiding British parachutists around The Hague and preparing safe houses for Special Forces who were dropped in from England. As the War continued, she fell in love with a Resistance commander, and worked with him to rescue wounded colleagues, steal weapons from German arms dumps, and move weapons around the country. They had a tumultuous parting and she continued her work, acting as a courier with a two hundred km bike ride to the north of Holland. When she returned home, she appreciated how much the war had changed her and her boyfriend, and prepared to try a reconciliation. 
 
 
 
She escaped a firing squad four times, and survived the war, mentally scarred by her experiences. She sought help, but the help she was offered came in a poisoned chalice, and she kept her secret to herself for almost fifty years. Her family in Holland was recognized by Yad Vashem, the Israeli organization that records those who saved Jews from the Holocaust, and she was awarded a pension for her work in the Resistance by the Dutch foundation Stichting 1940–1945.

Show book

By Ox Team to California - A...

Lavinia Honeyman Porter

By Ox Team to California is a firsthand account of a pioneer woman's journey across the West in 1860. The author brings thrilling and exciting stories from a 2000 miles journey from Hannibal, Missouri, to California, via Colorado and Utah.

Show book