What a fabulous read! The Washington Post said it better than I: "a born storyteller with a poet's ear." It's a truly lovely book. Honest, forthright, gut-wrenching where truth demands. ( )

Stunning language, great storyteller. Read by the author who does a wonderful job. Sad to see another actor with such low self esteem. I loved his accent and the great stories he told. It does go back and forth in time which was at times confusing, but not to the point of distraction. ( )

A novel posing as an autobiography

Were he to have been known as a screen writer, skill at writing would be expected. But Byrne's fame is stage and screen, so the reading experience was joyful. That said, I feel it important to state I rarely if ever read biographies but made an exception that paid off. Born in Ireland, much of his early days seemed logical, including the religious pursuits. I'd have given the book five stars but felt there was far too much dedicated to childhood and not nearly enough of Hollywood. Regardless, he's a master with words and has lead an interesting life ( )

What a pleasure listening to the Irish being spoken aloud, like poetry in many parts. Byrne shares his memories of growing up in a loving family in Dublin, the colorful characters of his home, and his desire to be on the stage. He openly shares the hardships and heartbreaks along the way, and finishes with a beautiful tribute to his parents. ( )

A beautifully written and candid memoir, Gabriel Byrne here charts the origins of his career as an actor, his struggles with addiction and with being abused by a priest as a child, and life in a working-class neighbourhood of mid-century Dublin. Byrne’s celebrity is almost incidental—while he does mention a handful of encounters with famous names, this is not a “celebrity memoir” as it’s generally understood.

I was impressed both by the determined intensity of Byrne’s self-reflection here, and how lacking in showiness or narcissism it was. You can tell that the issues that preoccupy him—mortality, memory, family, belonging—are things that he’s been thoughtful about for quite some time. Byrne has also an actor’s ear for dialogue and paying attention to what he calls “the theatre of the street”—at a remove of 40 years or more, it’d be a surprise if the dialogue presented here was word-for-word accurate, but it absolutely has the blas of Dublin, and I could hear it as I read. An elegant and tender book. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/_Glxxits8Og

Enjoy! ( )

Beautifully expressive and poetic autobiography of a successful Irish actor. Raised poor to loving parents, he describes his childhood and what his parents taught him, his loneliness, the drowning of a best friend, and being sexually abused.

Attracted to the stage he slowly built up a his acting career often while being drunk. He hated auditions; and didn't care for the superficiality of the acting field.

I was surprised at how well written this book is. I truly enjoyed reading it.

Beautifully written, achingly honest. To think that so much darkness dwells inside that gorgeous face and sublime actor. Ireland, and growing up Catholic will do it to you. ( )

I'm a sucker for an Irish brogue so listening to this was a no brainer. I'd seen Byrne in a few movies so I recognized him but wasn't terribly familiar with his work ("The Usual Suspects" was one movie I knew very well.) But the reviews for the book, and really mostly for the audiobook because the written book could never have the same impact, were absolutely gob smacking. And well-deserved they were. This memoir will probably seal his legacy as an Irish performer, if it wasn't already.

From the first few words I was transported to Dublin of the 50s and 60s, where Byrne came of age, living a working class childhood with his five siblings. It's a rough and tumble existence. His father wants him to guarantee his future by having a trade. He wants him to be a plumber. Byrne knows it's not really for him. He loves poetry and drama and when a friend suggests he join a drama club his life is completely changed. But that's just a tidbit because the main story is of his childhood, his abuse at the hands of his priest, his years when he thought he would train to be a priest until he realized it was not who he was at all. His descriptions of his home life bounce around as Byrne travels back and forth in time, settling on his relationship with his father, and his love for this rough man. Hollywood and the celebrities take a back seat to the importance of his early years. Absolutely wonderful! ( )

Full disclosure: I am of Irish descent! I am a sucker for a lilting, lyrical Irish accent! Nonetheless, this memoir, narrated by the author is marvelous. Be sure to listen to the audio version. I laughed out loud, cried, cringed, and ached. This is the story of a boy who had a rich inner life. The anecdotes from his acting career are few and fantastic, but this memoir is anything other than a Hollywood tell-all Byrne welcomes the reader/listener into the inner life of a boy, becoming a man. It felt honest, and consequently possibly universal. Not being a boy, I cannot be sure. If this narration is a performance, let it be so. Bravo, Mr. Byrne. The world is a better place for your memoir. ( )

He starts his memoir with a then and now look at the Dublin neighborhood in which he had spent his youth. His Catholic schooling, Christian Brothers, his first Communion with all the pagentry, pomp, and hidden cruelties. I found relate to both, the neighborhood I grew up in is much changed and I may have attended Catholic school in the states but much was familiar. There is also some amusing incidents anecdotes. The Dublin he carries will never leave him just as my old neighborhood will not leave me.

In between we learn of various endeavors, failings and his start in acting. Past and future. What is so touching is his total honesty, his openers and self deprecating humor. He makes clear that some of the sadness, griefs in his life will never leave him, he carries this wherever he goes. A man I would love to meet, he never appears arrogant but grateful for the opportunities he has been given. A terrific story and one I wish I had listened to as I've read he is his own narrator. ( )

I just finished reading Gabriel Byrne’s “Walking with Ghosts” and I had to pause for a minute, to collect myself. So transported was I into the author’s world, as I devoured this book, that I was left with a huge sense of loss as it ended, which I guess is ironic as this ties directly to the themes explored with grace, compassion, and heart-rending vulnerability in this treasure of a book. The author writes with an ease, a fluidity, that dips and weaves through story after story, some poetic as in the pastoral and sublimely descriptive tales of his boyhood in Ireland, to others crackling with vivid characters and often humorous adventures. The tales skillfully cross timelines back and forth in the authors life, winding through the events and relationships that have shaped him, from the uplifting and formative, to those that can only be described as (in the author’s words). “blackness”. Now in his twilight years, the author is thinking about life and big themes like death, memory, escape, fame, identity, imagination, judgement, loss and yearning, and how all have tied into his lifelong quest to belong, somewhere and with someone, in a way that would allow him to live a truly authentic life.

The resulting book, one of the most beautiful I have read in a long while, touched me in a way that illustrates an author, a man, a soul, whose deeply introspected journey, holding nothing back, has succeeded in sparking an intimate and authentic connection with this reader, and no doubt, with all of those who have the great luck to experience it.

5 very enthusiastic stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Grove Atlantic for an advance copy of this book. ( )

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: https://www.ManOfLaBook.com

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.

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. 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. ( )

Irish actor Gabriel Bryne has a stream of consciousness account of his memories growing up in a poor family, sexual abuse from Catholic priests, his failures at finding a profession, and his struggle with depression and alcoholism that resulted. I give 5 stars for his unfailing honesty which he has been able to channel into his acting. He is known for the role of Dean Keaten in The Usual Suspects, one of my favorite films and Dr Paul Weston in the TV series In Treatment. Gabriel Byrne was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to Irish cinema. ( )

This Memoir was antithetical to what I was expecting. Whenever I saw that Byrne was to appear on Broadway, I moved heaven and earth to get tickets. So it wasn’t unreasonable to think his Memoir would give some insight into the character he played in “Moon for the Misbegotten” and how he paired and fared alongside his co-star Cherry Jones. I wanted to understand where and how he found the chops to take on “Long Days Journey Into Night”. After all, he is an accomplished actor of the Irish persuasion interpreting Eugene O’Neill, an American playwright and writer of Irish descent. They both draw from tragedy and experience with the downtrodden. Byrne admits to finding refuge in imagination, stories being his safety net from hurt and loneliness.

Oh well, I didn’t find the answers I was seeking but I did wade through the most extraordinary stream of consciousness and was better able to see the man as a whole, well as much as he allowed. But damn I really would love to know what he thought about O’Neill and those parts he played to near perfection.

Thank you NetGalley and Grove Press for a copy ( )

The very first I saw of this book was something that slightly tainted my expectations. Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon, called it a masterpiece. Well. Before this, my expectations of Gabriel Byrne were limited, to say the least: I’ve only seen him in big-budget Hollywood films and TV-series, where I often found myself thinking he played quite the same character.

In spite of however he looks on screen, let me tell you this: there’s a lot for what McCann has said about this book. It is very, very good, especially in how Byrne speaks of himself, of how he jumps in time, and portrays his childhood. This book is nearly the result of a psychotherapeutical form of writing, albeit very reigned in, either thanks to Byrne, his editor, or both.

I dreamed of first love. A dark-haired girl with pale skin. How I loved Mary Foley in her pink cardigan, smiling. For her I would ride my invisible horse to the doors of Wild West saloons, shoot at Nazi stormtroopers, and score the winning goal for Ireland in the final moment of extra time. Alas, she loved another. Elvis Presley.

I consider that paragraph: it’s brief, sparing with words in a Bukowskian way while telling us a lot: the time is probably the 1950s or 1960s, there’s love, Ireland, national pride, rock ‘n’ roll and youth.

Then a quick jump to the future:

Later, I was seated at the bar of a restaurant on my block. The couple came in and sat across from me. The girl looked at me and whispered something to her boyfriend. He emptied a handful of peanuts into his mouth. —Hey, dude we know you, right? You live in the neighborhood? No, that’s not it, it’s from somewhere else. You look very familiar. —I got it, she said, excited. He was in a movie, right? What was the name of it? This is going to drive me crazy. It is him, isn’t it? I know I’ve seen him before. And I’ve seen you before, I thought. —He’s so familiar, isn’t he? she said to her man. —C’mon dude, tell us. Who are you?

Byrne allows the reader to think. Whenever I read a book and the author—or their editor—has decided that the reader is an intelligent person, I subconsciously sigh of relief and feel a bit more safe. A coddling and demeaning writer quickly loses its reader, and this probably won’t happen to the reader who’s delving into this book.

Byrne’s sense of a child’s acuity tightly had its grip of me:

A smell like rotten eggs came over the walls of the school on the wind. It was from O’Keefe’s yard, where they killed animals to make shoes and rosary beads. They hosed the blood off the walls. You could hear the cows and horses roaring with fear for miles.

He describes what is Catholic/Protestant in Ireland:

—What is the Holy Ghost? she asked another day.

—Sometimes, Sister, one of the boys said, the Holy Ghost comes down on the earth disguised as a pigeon. Like the time when He was telling the Virgin Mary she was going to have a baby, because she didn’t know. The pigeon has a kind face and sits on a windowsill with a halo around his head like in our catechism book. She shouted at him:

—The Holy Ghost is a dove. Not a common dirty pigeon off the street.

The sister told us we were lucky because Ireland is a Catholic country.

The funny moments, of which there are quite a few strewn throughout the book, make sure to be in the same vein as the rest of Byrne’s writing:

The Los Angeles heat had weakened my body. A blanket of smog hung low in the breezeless day. Melting in my room, I called the front desk: —My room is lovely, but I’m roasting. Do you think you could send up a fan? The receptionist assured me she would attend to it immediately. An hour passed before the phone finally rang: —I am sorry but I’m not having any luck. I’ve looked in the dining room and the garden and the pool area. —I mean a fan for cooling the room . . . not, like, a human fan. There was a pause. —I’m sorry, I’m new here.

He tells stories by using very short sentences. It works, especially when regaling about celebrities. His story about Gianni Versace and Leonardo DiCaprio rang especially interesting.

I thought of Gianni bowing that night and then murdered, lying alone in a pool of blood on the steps of his house, having just returned from breakfast at his favorite cafe. His sister Donatella said he died like an emperor. Facing the sky.

Also, meeting Richard Burton seems to have had quite the impact on Byrne.

—Fame, Burton said, doesn’t change who you are, it changes others. It is a sweet poison you drink of first in eager gulps. Then you come to loathe it.

There is a lot of introspection shared throughout the book, much in the same form as Aesop’s Fables: see me, I am flawed. There’s no narcissism hidden in Byrne’s text, nor is there any hiding that his writing unveils him as the human being that he is: nuanced, fragmented, prone to make mistakes, learning from those mistakes, taking steps throughout life, all while being subject to the world around you. As an actor, he has often faced being framed into a world by others. There’s a lot of waiting as an actor. A lot of wills forced upon your choices while you attempt to create art, at your most free.

When Byrne writes about his best friend, the grease monkey, and how he lied to lads about having had sex with her, that’s simply heartbreaking without any shred of sickly-sweet storytelling:

We didn’t speak again. By 1973, I’d heard she was working in the shoe factory, and on my way home from university one day I saw her coming toward me, but she crossed the street to avoid me. I never saw her again after that. Later someone told me she left Ireland, pregnant. I didn’t believe them. —The Lord knows who the father is, could be any dog or divil. —Her own poor father drinking himself into a stupor every night since she went. —Having to carry that cross, God love the poor man. —But wasn’t she let run like a wild animal around the place. I never forgot her. In 2004, I was walking on a footpath among Christmas trees in Brooklyn when I heard Marty Robbins singing “El Paso,” and I saw myself and the grease monkey in a convertible, speeding along the freeway to that faraway place. They say that the songs you love when you’re young will break your heart when you’re old. I stood for a moment and spoke her name aloud, and asked her forgiveness, wherever she was.

Byrne’s language is both powerful and brief, a combination that is rare to me.

His paragraphs on alcohol and drug addiction is a plain story, and he doesn’t attempt to play it any other way.

In short, this book is written in a very non-flamboyant manner. Byrne has steeped in fame and fortune and shed it, too. This is a book written by an individual who is leaving something behind that is a testament of what lies in all humans: the good, and the bad, without the lacquer sheen that Hollywood can provide while at its worst.

I enjoy anecdotes like this one:

The truth is, I don’t know what acting is. Many actors have told me the same thing. Where it comes from, why it comes to one and not another.

I’ve always remembered the story I was told once by an old actor who had been in countless productions. He said it had been a wondrous night. He had been transported to another place beyond the stage, beyond the theater itself. He had performed the role so many times but that night was unlike any other. His dresser came to the wings, the other actors stared at him, understanding something marvelous was taking place. They gazed in awe, knowing they would never see the like of this again.

When he lifted himself from the floor at the play’s end, covered in sweat and tears, to face the audience, they rose instantly as one. There were ten curtain calls that night before he stormed off the stage, pushing past his applauding fellow actors and stage crew to his dressing room. He slammed the door behind him. They could hear him shouting fuck fuck fuck, over and over. Finally the dresser tapped lightly on his door and the actor shouted for him to come in. The actor was staring into the mirror.

—If I may be permitted to say, sir, I have never seen anything like what you did on that stage tonight. It was transcendent.

—I know, I know, said the actor.

—Then why are you so angry, sir?

—Because I have no fucking idea how I did it, he replied, his head in his hands.

This is, in my eyes, not a masterpiece, but a deeply human autobiography that travels a long, long way, enough to make a memorable dent in the annals of autobiographies. ( )

I received an uncorrected proof e-copy of this from the publisher Grove Atlantic through NetGalley.

The older I get, some of my "rules" become more rigid, and then there are those that melt fluid and have incongruous exceptions. I am not particularly enamored of stream of consciousness writing (truly, I dislike it). This memoir is both stream and nonlinear, either of which can be sometimes off-putting. And yet....Mr. Byrne writes in a poetic prose, or prosaic poetry that he drew me in and the styles that would normally bother me...didn't. Example:

I am thinking of the seasons of my own life, learning now in my winter days I must shed what I have held most dear.
Yet there is contentment, even joy, in a landscape of bare trees, when the light makes everything more stark and bittersweet.
Here I stand now, a man longing to see as a child again, when every smell and sound and sight was a marvel. Yet I will never know again the childhood thrill of finding a hawk feather snagged on a briar, or the taste of wild blackberries after rain.
This place birthed my love of simple things.

Byrne has eleven years on me, but I understand. Nonlinear, as I noted, Byrne meanders through recollections - some quite detailed for so long ago, perhaps a skill of an actor?, perhaps a skill of just him - some nostalgic, some sweet, and some... oh, some not. Byrne's ghosts are many. Some are fond memories and some are quite horrible. Candid in his revelations, there are disturbing passages. This may have been a catharsis, maybe a confession...he did grow up Irish Catholic with all the baggage that saddles that combination, though he gave that up along with any belief in a god long ago.

I read this for the most part as I think he intended it to be read - go with the flow - but I did interrupt my reading to mark and note mark a few lines here and there. On moving to a new, well, new old house, and he in resisting tow of his mother

She pulled back the bolt of the gate and I saw the new house for the first time. It had no smile for me.

Change is hard.

Recalling how his grandmother took him to the "pictures", and how "the wonder and magic leaked away when we came out into the ordinary street again." And visiting his home many years later

The picture house is a carpet showroom now.
I stood yesterday where the screen would have been.
- If I can be of assistance sir? Was there anything in particular you were looking for? the salesman asked.
- There used to be an usher dressed in red braided uniform to click your ticket. Right where you're standing. And the stairways had photographs of the stars.
Glamorous and godlike. Beyond imagining.

He says how he loved the world of imagination his grandmother opened for him. Later, remembering school days, with castoff clothes and the accompanying shame, exacerbated by having a lunch of his mother's homemade brown bread instead of "sliced white pan from the shop like the other boys had."

When we went on school hikes into the mountains, I pretended I didn't like bread, and threw away the rough brown slices so the other boys wouldn't see.

That brought back a memory of mine that I'm not fond of - I had to bring home and reuse over and over until they fell apart the brown paper lunch bags and plastic sandwich bags; we didn't have much money. Today, recycling and reusing is a badge of honor, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with cruel teasing of children...?

Filming the mini-series Wagner with Richard Burton, getting drunk after hours, Burton waxing maudlin

- Fame, Burton said, doesn't change who you are, it changes others. It is a sweet poison you drink of first in eager gulps. Then you come to loathe it.
I'm rather ashamed to be an actor sometimes. I've done the most appalling sh*t for money.
[...]
- Give it all you've got but never forget it's just a bloody movie, that's all it is. We're not curing cancer. Remember.

Byrne says "I've made over eighty films since then and I've never forgotten those words."

Byrne's relationship with his father gets a few peeps through the fence hole. "It's funny how I half-listened to you, or didn't listen at all, for so many years. It's only now that I hear you." And as with many of his ghosts, Byrne has a one-sided conversation, his memories filling in the response. On his father's most valuable possession, a vintage watch:

It had been on your wrist as long as I could remember, beneath the crooked tattoo of a crucifix.
- You have to wind this fellas with care between your finger and thumb, always in a forward direction.
As you got older, you would bring it closer to your eyes, quint as I made to go, anxious to be away.
Late, when I'd visit you, you'd say:
- You can stay a few minutes yet. I'll put the kettle on.
Now I understand that was your way of telling me you loved me. Hanging onto those last moments between us.

Ghosts. Byrne walks with his, and he raised the specter of a few of my own ghosts, long banished but never forgotten.

Not to end on a down, I got a laugh out of one line I'm sure was not meant to be funny - Byrne's father was a cooper for Guinness Brewery and in 1959, when Byrne was 9, he said "The brewery smelled of things called yeast and hops which went into making black beer called porter." Guinness may be famous for their stout, but "called a porter" is about the best anyone who knows beer could say about that product! Okay, okay, withdrawn! But I can't stand their sourish, thin trapped-in-a-UK-tradition non-stout.

Two strings were attached to me being granted this copy. Because as I am not a professional book reviewer, but "simply an avid reader", one was "... that if you have a chance to read the book you take the time to write a review." I review every book I read now, even more especially the advance/preview copies I receive. A writer took the time to write; I took the time to read; I owe it to the writer, and also the publisher, to offer my observations. (The other string was signing up for notices of new offerings from the publisher...I can do that.) ( )