A raw and powerful memoir of addiction and recovery, across three continents and multiple drugs, from early childhood through adulthood.
28th July 2025
Hardcover
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
A raw and powerful memoir of addiction and recovery, across three continents and multiple drugs, from early childhood through adulthood.
Description
'A funny, nerve-wracking and utterly compelling memoir of addiction and literature written in a language that is entanglingly inventive, at once cool and lush, and equally capable of conjuring the most delicate sense-memory and hardest heartbreak'
COLIN BARRETT, author of Wild Houses'Wildly brilliant . . . a memoir of addiction and recovery for the ages, a stone cold classic of the form. I was floored by the power and beauty of this book'DONAL RYAN, author of The Queen of Dirt Island'Raw and powerful'IRISH TIMES, Books to look out for in 2025'Extraordinary'LISA McINERNEY, author of The Rules of Revelation'Unflinchingly honest, heart-wrenching and life-affirming'RTE, Books we're looking forward to'Only Tim MacGabhann can break your heart like this - and give you the language to stitch it back together. I urge you to succumb to the ice-cold, visceral glory of the black pool'BEN PESTER, author of Am I in the Right Place?Following an obsessive mind trying (and failing) to find relief, The Black Pool is a gripping thrill-ride through violent, chaotic underworlds. Tracing the roots of an illness through the failures of youth and adolescence and finally back to childhood, it's about all the wrong places where addicts look for transcendence - from work, to relationships, to writing, to anger.The Black Pool shows what happens when everything falls apart. It shows us rock bottom and the start of the journey to recovery from there. It's a memoir shot full of holes and shocking clarities. Towards the end, it achieves something like serenity - something like recovery.Critic Reviews
Raw and powerful -- Books to look out for in 2025 Irish Times
The Black Pool is a funny, nerve-wracking and utterly compelling memoir of addiction and literature written in a language that is entanglingly inventive, at once cool and lush, and equally capable of conjuring the most delicate sense-memory and hardest heartbreak -- Colin Barrett, author of WILD HOUSES
I've never read anything like The Black Pool. There are spiritual echoes of William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson, and of Sylvia Plath's jocose auto-fictional revelations of her efforts to die and to live, but these sentences are all Tim MacGabhann's own, and each one is a joyful thrill. His language is flamboyant, huge, dexterous, as alive as ink on paper can be. This is a wildly brilliant account of a life lived in a struggle against terrible pain, a memoir of addiction and recovery for the ages, a stone-cold classic of the form. I was floored by the power and beauty of this book -- Donal Ryan, author of THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND
Tim MacGabhann uses language with such striking precision and verve, I would, in all honesty, happily read him on even the most banal and benign of subjects. The Black Pool is anything but that. And don't I just love the pitiless clarity of it, the unexpected turns of tenderness, the vitality at its core? This memoir of pain, addiction - and so much more - is a reading experience of the highest order -- Wendy Erskine, author of DANCE MOVE
The Black Pool is extraordinary; MacGabhann manages to be simultaneously tender, raw, profound, hilarious and horrible, guiding us through a nightmare into beautiful, hard-won wisdom -- Lisa McInerney, author of THE GLORIOUS HERESIES
The profundity of The Black Pool is this: it is made out of a clarity so violent that it reminds the reader, who exists but has likely grown used to existing, how utterly strange and difficult it is to exist, and how thin is the membrane between dailiness and an abyss. An extraordinary memoir by a writer with a rare gift. I feel changed by it -- Belinda McKeon, author of SOLACE
The Black Pool is a bitter, truthful, painful account of life marred by addiction, and all the self-hatred it both masks and exacerbates -- Rob Doyle, author of HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN
Every sentence is a still-burning roach, flicked with glee into the face of death. Only Tim MacGabhann can break your heart like this - and give you the language to stitch it back together. I urge you to succumb to the ice-cold, visceral glory of the black pool -- Ben Pester, author of AM I IN THE RIGHT PLACE?
I found this book beautiful, wild, poetical, with lashings of hilarity soaking every page and surprises leaping from every line. It's a desperately important book by a writer in the prime of their abilities. This writer shows us gruesome darkness just as he wills us to survive it all. Bravo, a shot in the arm -- Maggie Armstrong, author of OLD ROMANTICS
MacGabhann traces the roots of addiction and illness through his youth and childhood, writing about where he tried to find solace and what happened when everything fell apart. A vibrant, darkly humorous writer -- Non-fiction highlights for 2025 Irish Independent
Unflinchingly honest, heart-wrenching and life-affirming -- 10 books we're looking forward to reading in 2025 RTÉ
A gripping and personal story of addiction -- 2025 Books to Read Irish Examiner
About the Author
Tim MacGabhann is the author of the novels Call Him Mine and How to Be Nowhere, the long poem Rory Gallagher--Live!--from the Hotel of the Dead and the memoir The Black Pool. A book of poems and a book of short stories are also forthcoming.
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28th July 2025
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