In his new book, Hanging with the Elephant, writer Michael Harding is back in Leitrim in the north-west of Ireland. His wife has left for a six-week trip to Poland and he is alone for the first time since his illness two years earlier. Faced with this time on his own, Harding resolves to examine the threat of depression that is a constant presence in his life and his dependency on his wife, the beloved, since his illness. But, as he attempts to tame the "elephant"—an Asian metaphor for the unruly mind—he finds himself drawn back to the death of his mother during the summer of 2012. Written with unflinching honesty,Hanging with the Elephant begins as one man's quest to overcome his demons, but becomes a journey into the depths of the soul, where we are given a glimpse of the one thing that holds us all.
