In Search of a Lost Brother

Circles around the Sun

A true story of madness, addiction, and a sister's quest for her lost brother 
 
When Molly McCloskey was a young girl, her brother Mike - fourteen years her senior - started showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia. By the time Molly was old enough to begin to know him, he was frequently delusional, heavily medicated, living in hospitals or care homes or on the road. 
 
In Circles around the Sun, she tells Mike's story - which is also the story of her own demons and of how a seemingly perfect family slowly fell apart and, in the end, regrouped. It is a work of extraordinary intensity and drama from a wonderfully gifted writer. 
 
'Every once in a while, a writer's voice hits such a clear note, the resulting book has the kind of sweetness that makes you hold it in your hands a moment before finding a place for it on your shelves. Circles Around the Sun is this kind of book: it's a keeper. A memoir of a schizophrenic brother, written with great care and simplicity, it is one of those stories that waited until its writer was ready to tell it.' Anne Enright, Guardian 
 
'Brilliant, at times heartbreaking ... A remarkably courageous memoir that is as strange and rich as any fiction' Irish Times 
 
'Devastating, beautifully written ... feels like one of those books the author simply had to get written' Dazed &amp; Confused 
 
'Her prose is tender, sometimes dreamlike, and yet rigorously truthful' Justine McCarthy, Sunday Times 
 
'Brilliant ... Circles around the Sun is an extraordinary accounting of singular sorrows and no uncertain triumphs that should resonate for every reader with a family of their own' Irish Times 
 
'There is a rare, uplifting honesty about this heartbreaking story' Irish Independent

Every once in a while, a writer's voice hits such a clear note, the resulting book has the kind of sweetness that makes you hold it in your hands a moment before finding a place for it on your shelves. Circles Around the Sun is this kind of book: it's a keeper. A memoir of a schizophrenic brother, written with great care and simplicity, it is one of those stories that waited until its writer was ready to tell it.

Brilliant, at times heartbreaking ... A remarkably courageous memoir that is as strange and rich as any fiction

Devastating, beautifully written ... feels like one of those books the author simply had to get written

Searing ... there is a rare, uplifting honesty about this heartbreaking story

Tender, sometimes dream-like, and yet rigorously truthful

Molly McCloskey was born in Philadelphia and lives in Dublin. She is the author of two collections of short stories - Solomon's Seal and The Beautiful Changes - and a novel, Protection.

When Molly McCloskey was a young girl, her brother Mike - fourteen years her senior - started showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia. By the time Molly was old enough to begin to know him, he was frequently delusional, heavily medicated, living in hospitals or care homes or on the road. 
 
When Molly reached the age Mike was when he became ill, she found herself suffering from deep anxiety and drinking heavily. She knew that schizophrenia runs in families, and at times the anxiety was so bad as to make her wonder about her own sanity. As the years passed, years when Molly - having moved from the US to Ireland - hardly ever saw or heard from her brother, she became deeply curious about his life and about what might have been. Through reading an astonishing archive of letters preserved by her mother and grandmother, and interviewing old friends of Mike's, she began to piece together a picture of his life, before and after the illness struck - the story of how a gifted and well-liked student and athlete was overtaken by a terrible illness that rendered him unrecognizable. 
 
Now, in Circles around the Sun, she tells that story - which is also the story of her own demons and of how a seemingly perfect family slowly fell apart and, in the end, regrouped. It is a work of extraordinary intensity and drama from a wonderfully gifted writer.

Protection

An astonishing debut novel about love, loss and memory.

Born in Philadelphia, Molly McCloskey has lived in Ireland since 1989. Protection, her first novel, follows two acclaimed collections of short stories, Solomon's Seal and The Beautiful Changes.

Gillian has achieved success and a degree of fame as the founder of a self-help retreat for high-achievers who want to 'decelerate'. Her husband, Damien, is the public face of a new heritage village that attempts to re-create 1950s Ireland. Their teenage daughter, Heather, dyes her face blue and is addicted to the Dystopia Channel. She is the least of their problems. 
 
When Gillian's beloved aunt Grace, who raised her following the sudden death of both her parents, succumbs to Alzheimer's, Gillian feels dismayingly cut off from her past. In grief and confusion, she starts taking an experimental drug that is believed to sharpen memory - with unexpected results. Meanwhile, Damien's village becomes a magnet for media ridicule. As he tries to defend himself and his work, he wonders if his increasingly remote wife is on his side. He knows that Gillian had a brief affair a few years ago with a former workmate. He doesn't know that she has just re-established contact with him ... 
 
At once richly comic, socially observant, and deeply moving, Protection is a thrilling first novel about love, loss, memory and forgiveness among ordinary people in a place - contemporary Ireland - that is stranger than they know.

Molly McCloskey

Adultery is often sentimentalised in fiction, but in her ferociously well written second novel Molly McCloskey gives it to us straight ... Each brilliant vignette offers a new angle on Alice's ballooning sense of disorientation ... In spite of its lyrical title and exquisite prose, When Light Is Like Water is a brutal examination of sextual self-delusion. But it also has much that's memorable to say about love - not the affair kind, but the real thing... McCloskey writes with shattering insight on loss and the way that it can make us feel tender towards the world

Powerful ... When Light Is Like Water is a tender depiction of love and loss that combines the personal pull of a memoir with the precision of a short story ... McCloskey's novel is packed with wisdom, and never heavy-handed with it. The details of the affair and the tawdry aspect of forbidden desire are brilliantly related

McCloskey describes everything with a luminous exactitude ... It's entirely beguiling

A thoughtful meditation on connection set against the backdrop of a world on the move ... Though McCloskey has no shortage of ideas, she also engages the heart: she's particularly good on the contrariness of our desires ... Fans of Anne Enright will find much to admire and enjoy.

Luminous ... As a narrator, Alice is a combination of coolness and intensity, passion and unsentimentality, nostalgia and clear-sightedness

McCloskey has the observational eye of the outsider, able to pinpoint the intricacies and mannerisms of the Irish people and landscape. ... But the writing's the thing. Oh, the writing. McCloskey is the master of the metaphor, the doyenne of the deceptively simple sentence. ... Hers is a wondrous turn of phrase, and yet somehow it makes Alice's life and interiority seem all the more real

Brilliant ... The author's ability to stir serendipity while steadily evoking atmosphere is remarkable ... McCloskey has a limpid, even liquid style: it's as if you were surreptitiously reading someone's chatty and extremely revealing letter ... Rest assured, When Light Is Like Water will feature on a few end-of-year lists

Refreshing ... McCloskey is an expert storyteller

When Light is Like Water is as gripping as a memoir and as intimate as a poem. Molly McCloskey has written a novel that is both urgent and reflective, a tender and unsentimental exploration of love's dark corners. It is brilliant: her finest book yet.

Molly McCloskey's prose has such immense authority, precision and seriousness. This shimmering, beautiful, restless work will stir recognitions without seeming to try. If you've ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with - as who hasn't, once or twice - be prepared to encounter the novel as mirror, her finest book to date, a triumph.

McCloskey writes with such care and craft; every description of the landscape of the west and the life of her captivating narrator is imbued with poetry and truth. When Light is Like Water is fresh and raw and completely entrancing.'

I loved When Light is Like Water. It is absorbing, tense, and beautifully written. Molly McCloskey has written a wonderful novel.

This is a short but powerful novel about love - love for a mother, love for a husband, love for a lover. When Light Is Like Water will be read for many years to come for its wisdom and precision.

A powerful and deeply affecting novel ... In writing that sparkles with intelligence and insight, the ordinary moments of everyday existence are charged with a beauty and tenderness that render them only just bearable

Written with brilliant precision and insight

A delightful fish-out-of-water account stitched together with gentle yet wondrous prose

McCloskey is a keen, sympathetic observer; her tight, controlled prose meticulously details Alice's honest consideration of her flaws and desires. The melancholic complexity of Alice's very human struggle carries this elegant novel with no easy answers.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Humane and lucid ... The real heartbreak in this wise, discomfiting novel turns out to be the love between mother and daughter

McCloskey interrogates the universal need of finding our place in the world in this luminous novel about longing and belonging. ... McCloskey's slim novel has an emotional heft and power that stirs you long after you've closed its pages.

McCloskey's prose is lovely and light-filled

'There are few things on earth smaller than this country.' 
 
Alice, a young American on her travels, arrives in the west of Ireland with no plans and no strong attachments - except to her beloved mother, who raised her on her own. She falls in love with an Irishman, marries him, and settles down in a place whose codes she struggles to crack. And then, in the course of a single hot summer, she embarks on an affair that breaks her marriage and sets her life on a new course. 
 
Years later, in the aftermath of her mother's death, Alice finds herself back in Ireland and contemplating the forces that led her to put down roots and then tear them up again. What drew her to her husband, and what pulled her away? And how do we know when we've found our place in the world? 
 
When Light is Like Water is at once a gripping story of passion and ambivalence and a profound meditation on the things that matter most: the definition of love, the value of family and the meaning of home.

When Light Is Like Water

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

The perfect gift? A Penguin Shop gift card

Molly McCloskey

Praise for When Light Is Like Water

Adultery is often sentimentalised in fiction, but in her ferociously well written second novel Molly McCloskey gives it to us straight ... Each brilliant vignette offers a new angle on Alice's ballooni ...

Powerful ... When Light Is Like Water is a tender depiction of love and loss that combines the personal pull of a memoir with the precision of a short story ... McCloskey's novel is packed with wisd ...

McCloskey describes everything with a luminous exactitude ... It's entirely beguiling

Adultery is often sentimentalised in fiction, but in her ferociously well written second novel Molly McCloskey gives it to us straight ... Each brilliant vignette offers a new angle on Alice's ballooni ...

Powerful ... When Light Is Like Water is a tender depiction of love and loss that combines the personal pull of a memoir with the precision of a short story ... McCloskey's novel is packed with wisd ...

McCloskey describes everything with a luminous exactitude ... It's entirely beguiling

Adultery is often sentimentalised in fiction, but in her ferociously well written second novel Molly McCloskey gives it to us straight ... Each brilliant vignette offers a new angle on Alice's ballooni ...

Powerful ... When Light Is Like Water is a tender depiction of love and loss that combines the personal pull of a memoir with the precision of a short story ... McCloskey's novel is packed with wisd ...

McCloskey describes everything with a luminous exactitude ... It's entirely beguiling

Books by Molly McCloskey

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter