Staring At Lakes – Balancing Depression and Joy

Throughout his life, Michael Harding lived with a sense of emptiness. Through priesthood, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease remained.

When he was fifty-eight, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy. Here, in this beautifully written memoir, he talks with openness and honesty about this journey, and how, ultimately, he found a way out of the dark.

Staring at Lakes started out as a book about depression. It became a story about growing old, the essence of love and marriage – and sitting in cars, staring at lakes.

In a sneak preview, you can listen to two extracts from Staring At Lakes here:

Do you agree with these reviewers?

‘It’s rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional involvement and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Michael Harding’s ‘Staring At Lakes’ is a remarkable book – funny, sad, poetic, full of insight and honesty, a warm-hearted book with a deep note of suffering in it – the suffering of depression. Yet Harding’s account, full of lust, humour and love, is itself testimony to the possibility of joy even in the midst of pain; for this is a book about joy also.’ AC GRAYLING