Broadway Book Club: "Ghost Light" by Joseph O'Connor

Every two months, book club members meet to discuss their latest pick, which is always a novel that takes place in the world of the theatre! All are welcome to join.

At December's book club, we will do our Annual Holiday Book Exchange.  If you want to participate you will bring (or mail) a wrapped book to EAG.  We take turns picking a book to unwrap, because there is no greater holiday present than new books!  

We will be meeting both in-person at Guild Hall and online on Zoom

Please RSVP by emailing karen@actorsguild.org

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Dublin 1907, a city of whispered rumors. A young actress begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works. Rebellious and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a girl of the inner city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. She has dozens of admirers but in the backstage of her life there is a secret.

Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled genius, the son of a once prosperous landowning family, a poet of fiery language and tempestuous passions. Yet his life is hampered by convention and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Scarred by a childhood of loneliness and severity he has long been ill, but he loves to walk the wild places of Ireland. The affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is turbulent, sometimes cruel, often tender.

Many years later, an old woman makes her way across London on the morning after a hurricane. Christmas is coming. As she wanders past bombsites and through the city's forlorn beauty, a snowdrift of memories and lost desires seems to swirl. She has twice been married: once widowed, once divorced, but an unquenchable passion for life has kept her afloat as her dazzling career has faded.

A story of love's commitment, of partings and reconciliations, of the courage involved in living on nobody else's terms, Ghost Light is a profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting novel.

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PS: EAG will get 10% of sales if you buy your book at this link: bookshop.org/a/80943/9781250002310