A lively club meeting this was, though I can’t say much of it concerned the book in hand. Perhaps that in itself says something.

Certainly Ghost Light is extremely well written; the highways and byways of Wicklow, the hustle and bustle of London – you’re there. There is humour and sadness, lyricism and plain speaking. On one hand you have Molly’s hilarious imagining of a meeting between Synge and her ‘Grannie’; on the other, her own highly uncomfortable visit to Synge’s mother. The comedy of a passage such as her description of sex with Seamus Shannon is balanced elsewhere by the pathos of her ‘offhand’ attempt to sell Synge’s letter to Michael Duglacz. The masks of comedy and tragedy, referenced in the novel, are exchanged comfortably throughout.

Certainly O’Connor is a master of detail. Someone I spoke to recently summed up her feelings to me on the subject: ‘Joseph O’Connor – why use one word when three will do?’ In a way I understand. Another perambulation through the Wicklow countryside ends, ‘Wild swans in the sky. An eagle.’ Are the swans necessary? Is the eagle? Assuredly not. Except that even these two apparently simple images conjure between them much of what the book is ostensibly about: wildness, beauty, savagery, freedom, loneliness – and, of course, the whole of the Celtic revival with the nod to Yeats and Coole. For those minded to track them down, there are other nods in the book. The largest – perhaps more a bow than a nod – at the end, when a second vivacious Molly gets the literary last word.

However, there is a ‘however’.

The problem is Molly herself, the heart of the novel. The character of Molly is alive in a way that makes some of the others seem caricaturish (Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge’s mother). And, perhaps, as much as that is a triumph, it is a problem. So real and present is the character that the inevitable questions arise: Did such or such a thing really happen? Did she really do that? Did they actually say that?

Maybe it doesn’t matter. After all, we read novels all the time in which we happily accept the train of events, no matter how outrageous, the conversations between characters, their thoughts. What makes this different, however, is that many of the ‘characters’ were real people, people drummed into our consciousness throughout our school years, people we see on tea towels and mugs and placemats and postcards. Like it or not, we find ourselves wondering how accurate the portrayals in this novel are. This makes for a slightly distracted reading experience to start with. And then we get to the Acknowledgements.

“Most events in this book never happened at all. Certain biographers will want to beat me with a turf-shovel.” The accuracy of biography per se is another debate; the interesting thing here is that this information comes at the end of the novel, not at the beginning, presumably on the basis that it’s better to blow up the balloon before you stick the pin in, than to try to blow it up after you’ve already punctured it. O’Connor coyly “dare[s] to ask forgiveness of these noble ghosts of world literature for not changing the names of the innocent”. It might be proposed that he also ask forgiveness of his central character. “Molly’s circumstances, although difficult in later years, were not as depicted here.”

One reading of the book might suggest, as it frequently suggests of its own characters (in a too-neat attempt to wriggle off the biographical hook), that in itself it merely ‘acts’ a role, that of a biography.

Another reading might conclude that the author of the book treated Synge’s muse in much the same way that the noble ghost treated her. Sure an’ ‘tis grand altogether she was for inspirin’ the bit o’ literature, but you’d not be wantin’ to be too faithful to her now . . .