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Title: Staring at Lakes

Subtitle: A Memoir of Love, Melancholy and Magical Thinking

Author: Michael Harding

Narrator: Michael Harding

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-10-16

Publisher: Yellow Kite

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

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 58, 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 30s, 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 best seller in Michael's native Ireland and won three BGE Irish book awards in 2013, including Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

Critic Reviews:

"It's rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional involvement and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded." (Sunday Times)

Members Reviews:

Staring at Lakes.

This is the first book by Michael Harding and as I heard him being interview on radio, I think, he sounded like a bit of a character so I thought I would give it a go. I enjoyed it as it was very different to what I would normally read. I had a good laugh at some parts and a little cry at others and stayed up too late reading it. So if you want something different then give it a try.!

A Must Read

This is a fantastic book. Well written, interesting, full of things that make you think about yourself and the world at large.

The story of the book is told in a series of loosely connected key events in the author's life. If I have any complaint, it's that I kept wanting to ask the author to explain something mentioned in passing or to spend more time on a story I'm caught up in.

But, what's there is fantastic. A must read for anyone who has had to change their dreams or has dealt with depression or someone who is depressed.

Ah, memoirs

This was a book club read for me and as someone who doesn't enjoy self indulgent memoirs, I found it a little hard going. However, it was beautifully written, although it did leave me feeling a little melancholy.

A book for the person who has lived a little!

The kind of book that can probably best be enjoyed by someone who has lived a little. It is like relaxing with a beloved life partner / close friends over a nice cup of tea and a few buttered scones. Lovely use of language. Lakes will have a new meaning for me from now on.

A worthwhile read...

An honest, good humoured portrayal of life with depression. The dark days are nicely punctuated by sunny spells which makes this a worthwile read wheather you suffer yourslef or would like a better understanding of those who do.