A Restless Life - Softcover

The writing frequently approaches the brooding power of William Faulkner. --Irish Literary Supplement

Leland's extraordinarily vivid and immediate memoir...is not just a great read, its also valuable record of the kind of narrow, choked circumstances faced by so many women...lacking power. --Sunday Independent

Light-hearted and continually sardonic at her own expense, Bardwell portrays herself as the tortured but obstinately wry outsider...she emerges at the close of this turbulent, curious memoir as a self-possessed and resourceful literary survivor. --Tom F. Wright - TLS

She has a devastating power of minute observation in a world which is rich if only in squalor. --Paddy Woodworth

As well as being a pastoral tale of adolescence, adulthood, travel, writing, infatuation and divorce, there are very entertaining thumbnail sketches of people like Paddy Kavanagh (whom Leland knew well) and the equally eccentric John Jordan, one of the great forgotten men of Irish letters. --Books Ireland

Leland Bardwell's poetry is witty, full of sharp, intimate honesty, full of truth and surprises. She is a poet who has felt the shocks of our time, the private impacts and the historic changes --Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

I was recommended A Restless Life by my sister and it blew me away. Leland Bardwell's story is a groundbreaking commentary on recent Irish history - things we all guessed must have happened, but never really heard about. Her honesty is astounding! She really breaks the silent Irish tradition by releasing all the skeletons from the closet.The book goes from her childhood in the 30s and ends in the 60s, and describes her life in a number of different countries, including India, England, Scotland, Paris as well as Ireland. It is the Irish chapters that I enjoyed the most... especially the ones about the groups of drunken literati around Dublin in the 50s and 60s. Her story is often quite sad, but she never falls into self-pity, and is pretty humourous about some of the situations she finds herself in. A Restless Life could be the story of thousands of Irish women whose talents were stifled by the religious, political and social constraints of the times... Highly Highly Recommended! --Labhaoise Molony

Light-hearted and continually sardonic at her own expense, Bardwell portrays herself as the tortured but obstinately wry outsider...she emerges at the close of this turbulent, curious memoir as a self-possessed and resourceful literary survivor. --Tom F. Wright - TLS

This no-holds barred account of Leland Bardwell’s life spans five decades and unveils the shroud of innocence that often clouds our vision of the past. Bardwell confronts her life head on, confessing bygone sins and exorcising old demons. However, despite the hardships of her life, this is far from a misery memoir, as A Restless Life celebrates the artistic, and often times anarchistic life of one of Ireland’s hidden, literary treasures.A young girl returns with her family from India to live in Leixlip, Co Kildare. For Leland Bardwell, like so many of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, the realities of life in the big house were far more modest and threadbare than appearances portrayed. A distant father and a temperamental mother left the awkward Leland to herself, and she spent much of her childhood disappearing into the countryside, smoking Afton cigarettes with pennies cadged from her father’s pockets. This itinerant and isolated existence becomes the template for much of her later life. Leland falls madly in love with her father’s cousin, a lifelong obsession which derails her quiet solitude. An unplanned pregnancy brings her to a war-torn London, where her son is adopted. Accumulating lovers and children over the years she becomes a teacher in the highlands of Scotland, and a paper-seller on the street corners of Paris, before returning to Dublin. Here, she struggles to combine motherhood with artistic expression, as well as juggle her various affairs (both official and illicit). Ostracized by her family, her tiny flat on Leeson Street becomes a refuge for writers, artists, eccentrics, and the drunken literary crew of McDaid’s pub. It is in this melee that she first beds and then befriends Patrick Kavanagh, in what is a humorous and affectionate portrait of one of Ireland’s best-loved poets. The heartbreak, mayhem, and comedy of those years is told with a raw but poetic honesty that justifies the Irish Times naming her “the doyenne of women poets writing in English.” Bardwell’s literary career peaks in this searing and raunchy memoir; A Restless Life is the fascinating story of an extraordinary Irish woman.