Arts Week with Judy Murphy

For a man who is so skilled at offering fresh insights into the everyday aspects of Irish life, author Michael Harding got an unexpected insight into his own personality after he underwent spinal surgery. That process began in 2021 and has resulted in his latest book, All the Things Left Unsaid: Confessions of Love and Regret.

Michael was in hospital when he received a phone call from a lifelong friend who informed him that a mutual acquaintance had died.

They chatted for a bit before the caller asked Michael how he was doing. At which Michael clammed up – didn’t even tell the man he was in hospital, never mind the serious operations he’d had.

This led him to reflecting on his inability to share intimate emotions, such as fear, even with someone he knew so well. Those reflection continued after Michael was discharged from hospital when he based himself in Donegal, on his own, to recuperate.

And it was in a house on the edge of the Atlantic that something unusual happened, Michael says.

“The ghosts came and sat down and said “why don’t you write a letter to me?’.”

The resulting book is the seventh in his series of memoirs, chronicling ordinary life in Ireland.

Except for his old friend who had rang him while Michael was in hospital, the letters in this book are to people whom he had loved and who are dead.

Sometimes these were people he’d lost contact with for no other reason except life got in the way. That was the case with Fr Pat O’Brien, poet and priest and former PP of Caherlistrane, who died on November 25, 2021.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.