Ghost Light

by Joseph O’Connor

First published 2010

Amazon

3.6(2,385)

In bomb-scarred London in 1952, the ageing Irish actress Molly Allgood walks towards a small BBC engagement while memories return her to Dublin in 1907. As the young stage performer Máire O’Neill, she begins a passionate and difficult relationship with John Millington Synge, the Abbey Theatre playwright whose class, religion, health and family obligations separate him from her world. Their attachment is affectionate, quarrelsome and repeatedly threatened by disapproval.

The novel moves between Molly’s impoverished present and the years when performance, ambition and love appeared capable of remaking her life. By placing her recollections at the centre, O’Connor reimagines a famous literary relationship from the perspective of the woman often reduced to a footnote in Synge’s biography. Theatre, memory and grief become forms of ghost light, preserving people and possibilities after the stage itself has emptied.