'Ghost Light' shines: O'Connor book chosen for festival

HAVING HIS novel, Ghost Light, chosen for this year's Dublin: One City, One Book festival, was "the best thing to have ever happened professionally" to him, said author Joseph O'Connor yesterday.

Speaking at the announcement in Dublin, O'Connor said some of the books that were chosen for the event in past years – Dracula, Gulliver's Travels, At Swim-Two-Birds– had been hugely important to him as a child.

“To have anything I have written included on the same list as these is just such a lovely thing to have happened. It’s like a beautiful dream, a gift. In fact I think it the best thing that has ever happened to me professionally.”

The One City, One Book event starts on Friday and runs through April. It is run by Dublin City Council.

Its aim, explained Jane Alger, director of the Unesco City of Literature office in the council, was to encourage people to read one book, to talk about it and engage with its context and ideas. The event is now in its sixth year.

“Every year the book in question goes to the top three of the bestsellers list and becomes one of the most borrowed books from libraries throughout the country.”

The main criterion for being chosen is that either the book or the author must have connections with Dublin. In Ghost Light, both are the case.

The novel is the story of the intense love affair between Molly Allgood, a young actor born in the Dublin slums in the late 19th century, and the eminent playwright JM Synge, whom she met while working at the Abbey Theatre. It was for her that he wrote the part of Pegeen Mike in The Playboy of the Western World.

Events will be hosted throughout the month and themed around the novel and its era, including events for children, a talk on the poetry of JM Synge, a cycling tour of literary Dublin and a night of live music, "The Music of Ghost Light", with such entertainers as Camille O'Sullivan, Sinéad O'Connor, Steve Cooney and O'Connor himself.

More details at www.dublinonecityonebook.ie