Every time I read about families who have sent their children away, I am aghast. The practice has been going on for many years. Usually it is for the 'good of the children.' Children in London during WWII were sent to the country for their safety. Other reasons were less obvious. Eisle was ...
Toibin is clearly an accomplished writer with a limpid prose style. However, a few days after completing reading these stories, the only two that remain in my mind are the ones about the Pakistani immigrants in Barcelona and the death of the old lady. While this may be because the subject matter ...
The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin is a deeply emotional, deeply moving book. It’s the story of Eamon Redmond, a complex man, grown on tender roots, influential friends, a keen intellect and a tangible distance between himself and those whom he loves.The book is set in three parts, each of which ...
With a brief of "Make someone up", Zadie Smith, the editor of this compendium requested a bunch of contemporary novelists to create characters, and they each obliged with a short story designed around their titular subjects in their own way. Though rather rhetorical an exercise (can you write a s...
In "The Art of Fiction," Henry James advises the beginning novelist, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!" Unfortunately, much of James's insight is now lost on us. He grows more revered and unread with each passing decade. Shifting tastes, including a century of sensory overload...
Mothers and Sons, a collection of short stories by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín, revolves around the theme, unsurprisingly, of the relationships between mothers and sons, each story focusing on a different family. There are three long stories, one about an art thief and his alcoholic mother, anot...
Toibin’s first novel, published in 1990, is a story of an Irish artist in self-exile in 1950s Spain, told in crisp, stoical prose that nonetheless achieves a stark, insightful beauty. Katherine Proctor leaves her husband and son to go to Barcelona where she takes up with a Catalan painter and a f...
There are three contemporary authors writing in English whom I find extraordinarily engaging: Cormac McCarthy, Tim Winton and Colm Tóibín . They are all stylistically brilliant and all three weave worlds that address significant issues regarding the human condition. All, also, have received sig...
In this remarkable biographical essay, Colm Tóibín examines the contradictions that defined Lady Gregory, an essential figure in Irish cultural history. She was the wife of a landlord and member of Parliament who had been personally responsible for introducing measures that compounded the misery ...
[4.5] Not the chap from the Yellow Pages ad. That was J.R. Hartley.The Go-Between is a book of high summer, set in a hot July (in the year 1900) - but which I was prompted to read now, a little late in the season, after noticing a basic similarity with The Line of Beauty. (Also having decided to ...
Michael is a puffball of conceit, one of those oblivious men who specialize in making others aware of their own intelligence and emotional requirements. Thus a puzzled sense of indignation wafts through Michael’s story, as he perambulates around Hamilton, Auckland, Wellington, Rotorua and the far...