The Black Pool cover art

The Black Pool

A Memoir of Forgetting

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The Black Pool

By: Tim MacGabhann
Narrated by: Aaron Heffernan
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About this listen

 'An unforgettable, freewheeling masterclass'
MICHAEL MAGEE, Nero Book Award-winning author of Close to Home

'Funny, nerve-wracking and utterly compelling'
COLIN BARRETT, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Wild Houses

'Extraordinary... A writer with a rare gift. I feel changed by it'
BELINDA MCKEON, author of Solace

'I was floored by the power and beauty of this book'
DONAL RYAN, author of The Queen of Dirt Island

'Simultaneously tender, raw, profound, hilarious and horrible, guiding us through a nightmare into beautiful, hard-won wisdom'
LISA MCINERNEY, Women's Prize for Fiction-winning author of The Glorious Heresies

Following an obsessive mind trying (and failing) to find relief, The Black Pool is a gripping thrill-ride through violent, chaotic underworlds. Tracing the roots of an illness through the failures of youth and adolescence and finally back to childhood, it's about all the wrong places where addicts look for transcendence - from work, to relationships, to writing, to anger.
The Black Pool shows what happens when everything falls apart. It shows us rock bottom and the start of the journey to the surface from there. It's a memoir shot full of holes and shocking clarities. Towards the end, it achieves something like serenity - something like recovery.©2025 Tim MacGabhann (P)2025 Hodder & Stoughton Limited Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Art & Literature Journalists, Editors & Publishers Mental Health Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Memoir Funny Witty

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It’s rare to read a memoir of addiction with a narrator so aware of their own unreliability and weaknesses, pulling comfort and familiarity from under themselves any time the experience might sound familiar from the genre. This is absolutely devastating and unflinching, experiencing the author’s furious intelligence in and out of fogs and blurs, sharply observing Dublin and Barcelona and Brasilia and Mexico City in spite of himself, and turning the lens further and further onto himself. The originality and intricate, funny, brutal threads of the prose made it impossible to put down.

The performance is understated and smooth, and sets off the book wonderfully.

Devastating, lyrical and honest

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This is yet another addict’s story. It is unremarkable, uninsightful and uninspiring. It neither entertains nor informs and is laced with self-pity and self-victimisation. Why do people read this stuff? It’s a mystery to me.

Despair and Misery from Start to Finish.

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