Preview
  • Walking with Ghosts

  • A Memoir
  • By: Gabriel Byrne
  • Narrated by: Gabriel Byrne
  • Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.9 out of 5 stars (16 ratings)

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Walking with Ghosts

By: Gabriel Byrne
Narrated by: Gabriel Byrne
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Publisher's summary

This audiobook is exquisitely and eloquently read by the author, Gabriel Byrne.

Walking with Ghosts
is the stunningly evocative memoir by Irish actor and Hollywood star, Gabriel Byrne.


'Dreamy, lyrical and utterly unvarnished' Colm Tóibín

As a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working-class parents and the eldest of six children, he harboured a childhood desire to become a priest. When he was eleven years old, Byrne found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, Byrne had been expelled and he quickly returned to his native city. There he took odd jobs as a messenger boy and a factory labourer to get by. In his spare time he visited the cinema, where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he could begin to imagine a life beyond the grey world of ’60s Ireland.

He revelled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin’s streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, those who spin a yarn with acuity and wit. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.

Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies.

‘Make no mistake about it: this is a masterpiece . . . poetic, moving and very funny’ – Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

©2020 Gabriel Byrne (P)2020 Recorded Books
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About the Creator and Performer - Gabriel Byrne

About the Creator and Performer

Gabriel Byrne has starred in more than 80 feature films and has worked with some of cinema's leading directors.
Movies include Excalibur, Miller's Crossing, Into the West, The Point of No Return, Little Women, Spider, The Usual Suspects, Dead Man, The End of Violence, Louder than Bombs, The Man in the Iron Mask, Vanity Fair and Death of a Ladies’ Man.
Next he stars as Samuel Beckett in the upcoming film Dance First, directed by James Marsh. On Broadway, he received a Tony Award nomination for his performance as James Tyrone Jr opposite Cherry Jones in A Moon for the Misbegotten, directed by Daniel Sullivan. He won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for A Touch of the Poet, directed by Doug Hughes.
In 2016, he starred as James Tyrone opposite Jessica Lange in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, directed by Jonathan Kent, for which he received nominations from the Tony Awards and Outer Critics Circle.
TV includes Vikings, Maniac, Zero Zero Zero and Secret State. He won the Golden Globe in 2008 for his role in the HBO series In Treatment. In 2019, Byrne was honoured by the Irish Film and Television Academy with a Lifetime Achievement Award for contribution to cinema. His critically acclaimed memoir upon which Walking with Ghosts is based has been longlisted for the 2022 French Prix Femina.

What listeners say about Walking with Ghosts

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Intense

It is almost unbearable listening to Gabriel Byrne reading his memoir Walking With Ghosts. It is so intense and moody and heartbreaking, hilarious, understated, poetic and passionate. I have to take breaks before diving back under the hypnotic spell of it. I was in love with him before but now I want to marry him and live in a windswept cottage in Connemara, listening to him talk.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent, really enjoyed this book

Loved the flow and range in this memoir, hope to see more from Gabriel in the future. He is a great storyteller.

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    5 out of 5 stars

wonderful memoir.

The narration -performance by the writer gives another dimension to this wonderful, poetic and evocative memoir.

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3 people found this helpful