Overview

“Exquisitely written.” —Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine
 
Named a Best Book of July by Buzzfeed * A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction 2022 Summer Read * Observer Book of the Week
By turns devastating and soaring, an ambitious memoir debut from one of Irish literature’s rising stars
When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis.
All Down Darkness Wide is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot.
Delving into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of...