Staring at Lakes

Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness - through faith, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease remained.

When he was fifty-eight, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy. Here, in this beautifully written memoir, he talks with openness and honesty about his journey: leaving the priesthood when he was in his thirties, settling in Leitrim with his artist wife, the depression that eventually overwhelmed him, and how, ultimately, he found a way out of the dark, by accepting the fragility of love and the importance of now.

STARING AT LAKES was a number one bestseller in Michael's native Ireland and won three BGE Irish book awards in 2013, including Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

'It's rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional involvement and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded' - SUNDAY TIMES.

'Staring at Lakes is a raw and honest account of a life in depression. Harding's writing, which is rich and lyrical, is especially astute when describing the pain of living with an illness that has the ability to suck the joy out of any occasion.' - DAILY EXPRESS

Michael Harding is an author and a playwright. His creative chronicle of ordinary life in the Irish midlands is published as a weekly column in The Irish Times. He has published three novels, Priest, The Trouble with Sarah Gullion and Bird in the Snow.

'It's rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional involvement and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded' SUNDAY TIMES 'Michael Harding's 'Staring At Lakes' is a remarkable book - funny, sad, poetic, full of insight and honesty, a warm-hearted book with a deep note of suffering in it - the suffering of depression. Yet Harding's account, full of lust, humour and love, is itself testimony to the possibility of joy even in the midst of pain; for this is a book about joy also.' AC GRAYLING Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness. Through priesthood, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease remained. When he was fifty-eight, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy. Here, in this beautifully written memoir, he talks with openness and honesty about this journey, and how, ultimately, he found a way out of the dark. Staring at Lakes started out as a book about depression. It became a story about growing old, the essence of love and marriage - and sitting in cars, staring at lakes. 'Engaging' IRISH EXAMINER 'Difficult to put down' IRISH TIMES 'Compelling' SUNDAY BUSINESS POST WINNER OF THREE BGE IRISH BOOK AWARDS

Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness - through faith, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease remained.When he was fifty-eight, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy. Here, in this beautifully written memoir, he talks with openness and honesty about his journey: leaving the priesthood when he was in his thirties, settling in Leitrim with his artist wife, the depression that eventually overwhelmed him, and how, ultimately, he found a way out of the dark, by accepting the fragility of love and the importance of now.STARING AT LAKES was a number one bestseller in Michael's native Ireland and won three BGE Irish book awards in 2013, including Non-Fiction Book of the Year. 'It's rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional involvement and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded' - SUNDAY TIMES. 'Staring at Lakes is a raw and honest account of a life in depression. Harding's writing, which is rich and lyrical, is especially astute when describing the pain of living with an illness that has the ability to suck the joy out of any occasion.' - DAILY EXPRESS

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