Openhearted: Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go

(Paperback)

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Description

A refreshingly frank, engaging and uplifting memoir of resilience, hope and love At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name. Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back and considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'. Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Openhearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others.

Reviews

A beautiful book * Irish Times *
Lifted my spirits beyond description! So loving and non-judgemental and Ann Ingle's enjoyment of life is beautiful to behold. Genuinely inspirational. I LOVE ANN INGLE -- Marian Keyes
I loved it, really loved it . . . a very uplifting, hopeful book . . . brilliant -- Ray D'Arcy
What a beautiful openhearted, at times broken-hearted memoir . . . honest, funny, searingly direct, a wonderful voice . . . remarkable -- Joe Duffy
Heart-breaking yet funny, and jaw-droppingly honest . . . by some distance, the most courageous, most poignant, most life-affirming memoir I've read in the last twenty years and more -- Paul Howard

Author Bio

Originally from London, Ann Ingle has lived in Dublin since the 1960s and is a mother of eight. In 2018, she co-wrote Driven, the memoir of motorsport legend Rosemary Smith, which was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award. Her first memoir, Openhearted, was shortlisted in two categories at the Irish Book Awards 2021