"
Ghost Light
is [Joseph] O'Connor's vivid and sometimes visionary reimagining of the love affair between Molly Allgood and the Irish dramatist John Millington Synge. . . . O'Connor rides the wave of Irish eloquence . . . a jagged lyricism redolent of Seamus Heaney."
—The New York Times Book Review
Dublin. 1907. Outspoken and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a Catholic girl from the slums of Dublin, dreaming of stardom as an actress in America. Her lover, the leading playwright John Synge, is a troubled genius, whose life is hampered by convention and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Their affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is quarrelsome, affectionate and tender.
Many years later, Molly, now a poverty-stricken old woman, makes her way through London's bomb-scarred city streets, alone but for a snowdrift of memories. As she struggles to navigate the present, Molly's past threatens to consumer her.