Throughout his life Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness
- through faith marriage fatherhood & his career as a writer a pervading sense of darkness & unease remained. When he was fifty-eight he became physically ill & found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy. Here in this beautifully written memoir he talks with openness & honesty about his journey: leaving the priesthood when he was in his thirties settling in Leitrim with his artist wife the depression that eventually overwhelmed him & how ultimately he found a way out of the dark by accepting the fragility of love & the importance of now. Staring at Lakes started out as a book about depression. & then became a story about growing old the essence of love & marriage
- & sitting in cars staring at lakes.