Adult Book of the Month
Staring at Lakes: A Memoir of Love, Melancholy
and Magical Thinking by Michael Harding
Published by Hachette Books Ireland in 2013
In his memoir, Michael Harding talks with openness and
honesty about his journey from his childhood in Cavan, leaving the priesthood
when he was in his thirties, settling in Leitrim with his artist wife,
through his breakdown and the months of depression after which he cried
for a year, to his eventual recovery. He describes how throughout his
life, he has lived with a sense of emptiness and a fear of abandonment.
He feels that there was a flaw inside him from the beginning – that
his breakdown had been threatening for a long time. Ultimately, he found
a way out of the dark, by accepting the fragility of love and the importance
of now.
The title of the memoir Staring at Lakes comes from a reflection on lakes
as a source of comfort to him from childhood to his recent recovery from
physical and mental illness. "The whole trick of mindfulness is calming
the mind and turning off all the tape-recorders in the brain and then
just being present at the moment - and that's what happens with me in
staring at lakes."
Staring at Lakes started out as a book about depression. And then became a story about growing old, the essence of love and marriage - and sitting in cars, staring at lakes.
Michael Harding was born 1953 in County Cavan. He is an Irish short-story writer, novelist, playwright and Irish Times columnist and member of Aosdana.
'It's rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional
involvement, and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded.' Sunday
Times
‘Engaging’ Irish Examiner
