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The Forest is the Path

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The Forest is the Path

By: Gary Lightbody
Narrated by: Gary Lightbody
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'The pages sing in this beautiful book.' Bono

'Moving and lyrical, The Forest is the Path is an imaginative and deeply personal journey of self-discovery.' The Irish Times

‘[An] astoundingly poetic book’ Pandora Sykes

You’re falling through time so all I can do is fall with you.

The numbness had set in long before I sat at your bedside. But even with senses impaired as the flight touches down at Belfast City I can somehow still feel the screeching of wheels on tarmac scorching something deep into me.

Gary Lightbody's phenomenal companion to Snow Patrol's No.1 Album of the same name is a remarkable work of narrative writing.

The Forest is the Path explores some of the main themes of the album; time, home, love, death and life, and serves as a prequel to the record, telling the story of his dad Jack's death. It tracks the journey he went on – a journey whose end seemed to unlock a part of Gary that had been dormant until he started to write songs again.

This is the book that emerged from that time.

'Raw…and extraordinary.' Nihal Arthanayake

'Lightbody's propose is fluid and unflinchingly honest' The Irish Times

'Absolutely beautiful.' Audrey Carville

‘I have both cried and laughed reading this book. It is beautiful.’ Muireann O'Connell

©2025 Gary Lightbody (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers Art & Literature Artists, Architects & Photographers Entertainment & Celebrities Heartfelt
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Critic reviews

'A tender, thoughtful exploration of love and grief. A beautiful book.' Marian Keyes
'Absolutely floored me. Novelistic and majestic. I've long loved Gary Lightbody as a lyricist. Maddeningly it turns out he can do it in the long form too. This is a brilliant prose debut. I hope there's more to come.' John Niven
'A stunning meditation on family, grief and creativity, told in gorgeous prose. The Forest Is the Path is an evocative and moving manifesto of loss and love, and a reminder of what's important.' Sinéad Gleeson
'The Forest is the Path is a lyrical, moving and astoundingly honest portrait of grief. A deeply personal account of a difficult time which will resonate with every reader who's ever lost someone close. Full of pathos, hope and hard-won profundity.' Jan Carson
‘Lightbody’s experience in songwriting — heartfelt, confessional treasures like Chasing Cars, Run and Open Your Eyes is beautifully rendered in narrative form.’ Sunday Times, Pavel Barter
'I read it in one go…and then I read it again.' Lorraine Kelly
'A beautiful piece of work.' Ryan Tubridy, Virgin Radio
'The book and the album – both are absolutely terrific.' Brendan O'Connor
‘Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol has written a really beautiful book, The Forest Is the Path, about writing and dealing with the grief of losing his dad. It’s really great.’ Edith Bowman
'This book is visceral and raw, travelling at breakneck speed through moments of grief, memories and artistic creation.' The Sunday Post (Scotland)
'Like Joan Didion in her remarkable memoirs about grief, Lightbody is well able to capture the surreality of the disappearance of a loved one out of your life.' The Irish Independent
'Gary Lightbody's lyricism works just as beautifully on the page as it does in his music.' Loverboy Magazine
'Much like Dante's dark wood or the mythic journey into the unknown, Lightbody's forest is both an obstacle and a revelation – a place where getting lost is the only way forward.' Irish Times
All stars
Most relevant
Honest, visceral and thought provoking. Best audio I think I've ever listened to. Completed in a day.

Emotional, raw and profound

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I identified so much with this audiobook coming from Northern Ireland myself and losing my own dad on NYE 2021. Gary’s story is very heart felt and poetically written. As Gary’s father passed away with dementia it’s as if Gary has captured these moments incase one day he himself cannot recall this very important part of his life. It doesn’t mean that he himself will get the disease but I’d say it’s a very scary thing to have to process and that the fear is real. A lesson to us all to appreciate every moment in life and to never take anything for granted! I loved hearing Gary read it himself and afterwards I listened to the full album ‘The forest is the path’. It’s amazing, as all the other albums before it were! A real credit to Northern Ireland! Well done Gary!

Right from the heart

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This was a beautiful book which definitely needed to be listened to rather than read. Very moving and thought provoking. A soul laid bare.

Outstanding in its honesty

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This was a hard read for me at times. It is a personal tale of grief laid out before us raw, brutally honest and absolutely beautiful. It is a book about loss and a journey through a timeline of memories but ultimately it is a book about love and that shines through. I stopped reading it mid way and got the audio book ( thank you for the perfectly timed offer audible) I wanted to hear the author speak his words, Im glad i did.

Raw, brutally honest and beautiful

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This book is a deeply personal and unfiltered exploration of loss and the weight of grief. It’s written with such raw honesty and poetic beauty that every page feels like a glimpse into Gary’s heart. The words carry both great sadness and warmth, capturing the complex emotions of mourning, memory, and finding a way forward.

What makes it even more powerful is how it resonates on a deeply human level—whether you’ve experienced loss yourself or not, you’ll feel every emotion as if it were your own. It’s the kind of book that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page. It breaks your heart in the most beautiful way and, somehow, put it back together again.

“The world is only heavy if you try to lift it.”
Extraordinary book!

Raw and deeply personal journey through loss and grief

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