Walking With Ghosts

A wry and warm, swirling poetic reverie of a memoir

Colin Barrett

A joy of a book - full of heart and humour, beautifully told

Sinéad Gleeson

Byrne arrives at a truth greater than an honest and sensitive memoir; he verges on a profoundly touching articulation of our short time on earth, time that will make of each of us nothing more or less than a ghost

Independent

Reading the book was a beautiful experience; it’s superb. It really is a very special book so if you love someone buy it for them for Christmas

Eamon Dunphy

Structured around an imaginary, haunted visit to the Dublin of his youth, the book does offer sketches from the movie wonderland – John Boorman being bossy on Excalibur, testy encounters with Laurence Olivier in the 1980s – but it is more to do with conjuring up a now-vanished Ireland. The smell of the Guinness brewery. Early acting experiences in a nativity play. The church, everywhere the church

Irish Times

The writing is so vivid it’s as if we are by Gabriel Byrne’s shoulder through the sorrowful times and the joyous moments. He weaves an intimate and absorbing tapestry of the poignant and the funny

Kirsty Wark

A working-class family memoir as well as a meditation on fame and its discontents

Observer

Walking with Ghosts is exquisite. This book feels like the culmination of a long literary career and not the debut of a famous actor. Byrne makes himself fully vulnerable while in total command of language and form. There is great truth and great beauty in this close examination of a life and the passage of time. I’ve never read a memoir so raw and honest and literary and absolutely, staggeringly brilliant

Lily King

[Byrne] writes with much more depth than the typical celebrity memoirist, accessing some of Seamus Heaney’s earthiness and James Joyce’s grasp of how Catholic guilt can shape an artist . . . A melancholy but gemlike memoir, elegantly written and rich in hard experience

Kirkus (starred review)

Mercurial, ferociously honest and moving . . . A poignant symphony of memories and dreams, longing and loss, in a search for the immigrants most elusive prize, home

Karl Geary, author of Montpelier

A poetic journey into those secret realms of memory which dominate our lives, but are rarely spoken about. By revealing himself with such courage, compassion, and exquisite poise, Gabriel Byrne gives readers that rare gift of being able to see themselves in the feelings of another person. This book is more than a memoir—it’s a mirror that reflects the deepest parts of us in exile

Simon Van Booy

A remembrance of the Ireland Byrne left behind, one which is no longer there

Hot Press, '2020 Books of the Year'

Dazzles with unflinching honesty, as it celebrates the exuberance of being alive to the world despite living through pain. [Byrne's] portrait of an artist as a young boy is steeped in nostalgia of the best sort, re-creating the pull of home . . . With this tender book — full of warm and often funny stories — Byrne shows us the depth of his true character

Washington Post

In emotional, evocative prose, Walking With Ghosts describes the town outside Dublin where [Byrne] grew up, the oldest of six children crammed into a small house, their father working as a barrel-maker for the Guinness brewery, everyone in each other’s business. They were steeped in Catholicism . . . In passages that are horrifying, then funny, then both, he describes, for instance, learning the story of Adam and Eve from a fire-and-brimstone nun, in a lesson that ends with God declaring to the fallen pair: 'And by the way, your children will be miserable as well.' ('That’s why the world is such an unhappy place,' the nun adds.) . . . Can you go home again? That is the tantalizing question raised by Walking With Ghosts

The New York Times

Irish actor Gabriel Byrne’s smoky voice whispers in your ear, gets into your head, and takes you on a deeply personal journey into his life.

AudioFile