A Review By Zoe Boulton

‘Ghost Light’ is based on the true story of John Millington Synge, an Irish playwright battling with cancer when he begins a relationship with young actress Molly Allgood. Synge was from a Protestant, middle class background, Molly was from a Roman Catholic, working-class family, neither family approves of the relationship which ensues.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, being a big fan of Joseph O’Connor’s writing. I have to say that I was extremely disappointed; I found this novel to be unrelentingly miserable. It is presented in the form of Molly, elderly and alone, looking back on her life. She is living in London in the 1950s, struggling to find work as an aged actress, she has a terrible alcohol addiction and is living in abject poverty. She is obsessive over her doomed, quarrelsome relationship with the self-centred Synge of 40 years before, even though she went on to marry afterwards and have a daughter (who is rarely mentioned)she is fixated on that one aspect of her past. She has no future to look forward to and finds nothing to cheer her in the past.

Normally, I can cope well with a bit of misery in novels and there is a beauty to be found in sadness. In this book, however, the narrative is devoid of any hope, any positivity, it wallows in self-pity and hopelessness. I battled to read it, hoping that something more upbeat would happen, some little ray of light would shine into the story, but it didn’t. This novel did, however, leave me wanting to know more about Molly’s life and whether it was as unhappy as O’Connor portrays so I suppose that is a positive in this book’s favour! “Ghost Light” may well be a book that would be enjoyed by other readers but, sadly, it wasn’t enjoyed by me.