The Master by Colm Toibin (2004, Short Listed for the Booker Prize)

Colm Toibin has obtained great commercial and literary success. I have posted on several of his novels and short stories as well as his works of literary criticism.

I first read his The Master about ten years ago, before I began The Reading Life.  I was motivated to read it again by all the glowing reviews and by the sale price for the Kindle edition of $2.95.  I also wanted to reread it after reading a number of the fictions of James and a biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson, about whom I knew nothing ten years ago.

The Master focuses on the life of Henry James from January 1895 to October 1899, years he lived in London.  It is centered on the interior world of James.  It opens with the humiliation of James when his play Guy Domville is a total flop on the London Stage.  James reacts by deciding he needs more solitude to focus on his novels.  He buys a house in London.  One of the things I  recalled from ten years ago was the great pleasure skill Toibin had in showing us the great joy James found in furnishing his house.

We see his complicated relationship to his brother William and his sister Alice as well as to his parents.  The mystery of the sexuality of James is dealt with very subtly.  Homosexuality was illegal and the fate of Oscar Wilde was very harsh.

James had a very close relationship to the American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson, which plays a large part in The Master.  Some say it was the inability or refusal of James to enter into a romantic relationship with her that led to her suicide.  This is of course speculation.  We see him with her in Venice.

If you are into Henry James then you will find The Master fascinating, as did I.

Mel u

The House of Names by Colm Toibin (forthcoming May, 2017)

My Posts on Colm Toibin



"Cassandra lifted her beautiful head and haughtily caught my eye, as if I had been placed on earth to serve her; then she looked at Electra, who stared at her in wonder. Many other chariots had come by now, some bearing treasure and others filled with slaves, their hands bound behind them. Cassandra stood apart from this, glancing with disdain at the slaves who were being led away. I moved towards her, and invited her to enter the palace, signaling to Electra that she should follow." Spoken by Clytemnestra upon the return of Agamemnon, her husband, from Troy

Colm Toibin (Ireland) is a tremendously successful author.  I have posted on several of his novels, short stories and his illuminating literary essays.  His fiction ranges from contemporary Ireland to recreations of ancient stories

I was very happy to receive a review copy of his latest novel, The House of Names.  Toibin focuses on Ancient Greece, circa 500 BCE at the court of King Agamemnon upon his return from Troy, nine year ago.  It centers on Clytemnestra's revenge for Agamemnon's sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia.  Her father had promised she would marry Achilles but at what she and her mother thought was to be her wedding day, she was sacrificed to the Gods to assure smooth sailing to Troy.

The story, full of violence and suspense, is told from four points of view.  Clytemnestra is consumed by her hatred for her husband and her contempt for the Gods.  Her murder of her husband is very vividly rendered.  We enter the consciousness of Electra, younger sister of Iphigenia.  Agamemnon brought with him as one of the spoils of war a beautiful young woman who he intends to be his wife, with Clytemnestra being reduced to a servant.  In the character of Orestes, younger brother of the girls, we see his divided loyalties.

House of Names is an exciting and thought provoking work.  I enjoyed very much Toibin's imaginative recreation of these ancient Homeric myths.

Mel u

New Ways to Kill Your Mother Writers and their Families by Colm Toibin (2012)

Colm Toibin (1953, Ireland) is one of my favorite writers of fiction.  I especially liked his novel based on the London years of Henry James, The Master and Brooklyn.  Additionally I learned a good bit from his non fiction work, Lady Gregory's Tooth Brush.  I have posted on these works and several of his short stories.  Additionally I have read several of his short pieces on Henry James. When I was notified a collection of his literary essays, Nine Ways to Kill Your Mother Writers and Their Familes was on sale as a kindle for $3.95 happily made the purchase. 

Among the Irish writers covered are Yeats, Synge, Joyce, Beckett, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle and Hugo Hamilton.  There is very interesting chapters on Jane Austin and Henry James on the importance of aunts.  Conflicts brought on by the difficulties their families had accepting their sexuality feature Hart Crane,Tennessee Williams and Thomas Mann.  There are two chapters devoted to James Baldwin.  Borges and John Cheever are also featured.

I learned something from each of the essays.  The chapter on Synge and Yeats will reshape my vision of Irish literature.

I  much enjoyed this book and endorse it too all interested  in the subject matter.  The families of writers have many of the same issues non literary families have which gives the book greater interest.

Mel u

"A Journey" by Colm Toibin (2007, from Mothers and Sons)

Colm Tóibín  (Ireland, 1955) is one of my favorite fiction writers and a master interpreter of literature. I first read his excellant novel based  on the London years of Henry James, The Master, then Brooklyn about an Irish woman who moves to the New York City area, then the unique Testament of Mary and lastly his most recent book Nora Webster.  I also read his monograph, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush as well as several of his short stories.  I have profited from his essays on Henry James.  

This year's Irish Short Story Month is a lower key event than in the past but there are still stories yet unread in his anthology, Mothers and Sons so I decided to include his "A Journey" in this year's Irish Short Story Month.

The story begins shortly after a married couple has had, after twenty years of marriage, their first child, David.  They never expected a child after twenty years but he did not upset their comfortable routine as much as they feared.  Compressing a bit, we flash twenty years forward.  The father Sheamus is very sick, probably going to die soon.  The mother has gone to pick their son up from a mental hospital where he was treated for problems we never quite understand.  He rides in the back seat of the car and tells his mother he does not want any questions.  She is bringing him home to live.  She wonders if she can summon up the unselfishness to take care of them both.

This is a very moving story anyone who ever had a wonderful self-sacrificing mother will cherish.  It depicts how women are sometimes pushed into the role of caregiver.  

Mel u

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin (forthcoming October, 2014)

My Posts on Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin is one of the most loved of contemporary novelists. Of his numerous books I have read and posted on The Master (a wonderful book on the London years of Henry James), Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary, a collection of short stories, Mothers and Sons, and his fascinating nonfiction work on Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory's Tooth Brush.  

I just completed his latest novel Nora Webster. Set in Wexford, Ireland (around 1968 to 1972, based on current events) it focuses on a woman both amazing and ordinary, Nora Webster, trying to cope with the impact of being left a widow at forty with four children to raise on her own, two boys and two teenage girls.  Her husband, Maurice, a teacher,  rescued her from a stifling office environment.  He supported the family and she took care of them.  We see her trying to shield her children from money problems.  She has to sell their vacation home to start.  I really don't want to tell too much of the very exciting plot.  I will say Toibin is such a master that he can create great excitement out of the events of everyday life without having to resort to plot pyro-theatrics.

I will just mention some of the things I like about this very moving beautiful novel, which I predict will be another best seller.

The character of Nora Webster is brilliantly drawn.  You can see she is devastated by the loss of her husband of twenty years but she knows she must go on for the sake of the children.  In one great set piece she ends up going back to work the office she left to marry Maurice.  A woman she hated, you will hate her also, is now the office manager.  Seeing Nora adjust to the people in the office was just compleletly wonderful. There are lots of class markers in the story and these were very interesting.  I also liked the use of Ireland as the place setting.  I imagined myself walking down Grafton Street,before it became full of tourist places on a trip to the big city to shop.  It is a time of terrible troubles in Northern Ireland and Nora is worried one of her daughters going to school in Dublin will get in trouble in political protests.  Protestors burn the British Embassy in Dublin and for a very tense week Nora loses touch with her daughter.  We also see her trying to help her sons cope with their adolescent years.  Nora is a strong,good Irish mother trying to get by as best can.  We learn a lot  about small town Ireland versus Dublin.  

There are lots of very interesting things in Nora Webster, much more than i have mentioned.

I throughly enjoyed reading this work and hope in time to read lots more by Toibin.

A full biography and information on all of his books can be found on his web page.

http://www.colmtoibin.com/

Mel u

"A Long Winter" by Colm Toibin

"A Long Winter" by Colm Toibin  (2007-from the collection Mothers and Sons)

Irish Short Story Month

Year III

March 1 to March 31

Colm Toibin
Dublin

Colm Toibin is one of my favorite contemporary writers.   I have read and posted on his wonderful novel about Henry James, The Master, Brooklyn (about a young Irish woman who moves to the United States, and his most recent very controversial  The Testament of Mary.  I also read and profited from his book on John Synge and Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush.   Additionally I have prior to today read all of the eight short stories in his collection Mothers and Sons but for the final and longest one, "A Long Winter".    All of the short stories are superb.  All but "A Long Winter", which is set in the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain,  are set in Ireland.

There are four main onstage characters in "A Long Winter".   We have the mother and wife of the family, her husband and the father of their two sons, one of the sons who is at home but do to join the army soon (another son is in the army now), and a house boy who joins the story about sixty percent into it.   One day the son, in late teens, is with his mother at the local market.   Normally she goes there to sell eggs and vegetables and buy supplies but today she is just their to buy.   She tells her son she has something to do and  goes off on her own.  She is gone a long time so he goes looking for her.   He sees from the windows of a tavern his mother rapidly down a glass of wine, with two empty glasses next to her.  He never knew she drank at all.   She tells him the cooking oil they need is not in stock and it will be sent to the house in a couple of days.   He soon finds out when his father pours out the oil when it comes that it was not oil but terribly cheap homemade wine.   Her doctor had told her that the wine was going to kill her.   A terrible fight occurs between the parents.   Things seem normal for a while then one day the mother is just gone.   It is the middle of winter and they go to look for her.  They are soon joined by the police and others from the village.   There is a terrible since of apprehension that hangs over the story.  The story line also deals with the awaking sexual attraction of the boy for other men, including a young police officer.   The character of the houseboy that joins the family after the mother is gone is a brilliant touch.  Toibin has such a light masterful touch that it is a joy to read his work.    He has another collection of short stories I hope to read one day.

Please share your experience with Toibin with us.

Mel u

"Even Carmilla looks good today"
Rory

"Happy St Patrick's Day"-
Carmilla

"The Colour of Shadows" by Colm Toibin

"The Colour of Shadows" by Colm Toibin (2011, 19 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Colm Toibin

Event Resources 

Ways to Participate-do a post on your blog and let me know about it-I will keep a master list and I will publicize your post and blog.

If you are an Irish author and would like to be featured, please contact me.   There are several options open.

If you would like to do a guest post on my blog on anything related to Irish short stories, contact me.

I have posted on a number of works by Colm Toibin (1955).   I have read three of his novels including Brooklyn, The Master, and The Testament of Mary.   I have also read his short non-fiction work on Lady Gregory and his amazing short story based on her,  "Silence".   Last year during ISSM2 I posted on his great short story collection, Mothers and Sons.  I have also read prefaces and introductions he has written for classic novels.  

"The Colour of Shadows" (from his collection of short stories, "The Empty Family") is a powerful story about a subject most of us would very much prefer not to think about, putting our family members in a nursing home.  Paul's mother deserted the family when he was very young.   He barely remembers her but he knows people said "she drank".   He  was raised by the sister in law of his mother.   She was not rich by any means but she made sure he had all she needed and saw to him getting a science degree from University College Dublin.   He gets a call at work one day saying she has fallen at home.   Her nurse tells him she cannot live alone anymore.   He has no choice but to put her in a nursing home.   I do not wish to retell the plot.   It is a really brilliant account of what it is like to visit a fading loved parent (which is what she was to him) in a nursing home.   The account of the visits to the home are totally perfect.   There are subplots involving his mother who is still alive and somewhere in the area and his own sexuality.   This is a great short story

Mel u

"Two Women" by Colm Toibin

"Two Women" by Colm Toibin (2011, 30 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Colm Toibin

County Wexford

Event Resources 

Ways to Participate-do a post on your blog and let me know about it-I will keep a master list and I will publicize your post and blog.

If you are an Irish author and would like to be featured, please contact me.   There are several options open.

If you would like to do a guest post on my blog on anything related to Irish short stories, contact me.

I have posted on a number of works by Colm Toibin (1955).   I have read three of his novels including Brooklyn, The Master, and The Testament of Mary.   I have also read his short non-fiction work on Lady Gregory and his amazing short story based on her "Silence".   Last year during ISSM2 I posted his great short story collection, Mothers and Sons.  I have also read prefaces and introductions he has written for classic novels.   Obviously I really like and admire his work and I wanted to at least post on one of his stories for this years Irish Short Story Month.

"Two Women" (the second story in the collection The Empty Family) centers on a very famous set designer for movies.   She is Irish, though she has not lived there for decades and has few, it seems fond memories of it, and she is eighty years old.  Like his master, Henry James, Toibin is very good at writing about older women.  The woman is single, never married with no children.   Over years of working in the movies she has become quite affluent.  She is on her way back to Dublin to work on a film, largely set in a pub, and we can see that her bearing can only be described as imperious.   Her manner is all business, she knows what she needs to do quality work and she is devoted to her craft.  There is a lot in this story.    I was fascinated by the sub-plot about the Guatemalan family that works for her and whom she has made her heir.  Toibin was brilliant in his depiction of them and their relationship to the woman.   We get to know her assistant, Gabi, a bit and I loved it when she stood up to Francis, the woman's name but I doubt if many call her that.

Francis is reminded in Dublin of the great love her life, Luke.  He was a very well regarded Irish actor.  They  met on a film set.   There relationship was very intimate and lasted over ten years but they never lived together and never were in Ireland together.    Francis looks down on Dublin and the people there.  She lives in California.  There is another woman in the story, the woman Luke married and lived happily with for many years after Francis and he ended their relationship. He has been dead for a long time.   The scene depicting the meeting of these two women was so subtle in its depth of characterization as to be almost stunning.




Mel u

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin  (2012, 96 pages)

The Irish Quarter

"I speak to her in whispers, the great goddess Artemis, bountiful with her arms outstretched,

and her many breasts waiting to nurture those who came towards her.  I tell her how much I

long now to sleep in the dry earth, to go to dust peacefully with my eyes shut in a place near

here where there are trees".  

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin has a very good chance to be the most talked and blogged about book by an Irish author in 2012.   This brilliant and daring book attempts to show us what the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was like after his death.  Many people will be shocked to see that Mary was not a Christian, she did not think her son was the son of God and she thought his disciples were a collection of losers and misfits who "could not look a woman in the eye".    Mothers among us, think about this for a second.  One day your son announces he is the son of God and he surrounds himself with other young men, on the dole, with histories as reprobates, with at best low end jobs who hang on his every word.   Imagine he begins to gather a following through speeches he gives.   Then he seems to preform miracles which cause the authorities to begin to observe him.   Soon you are told he will be crucified as a trouble maker (there is a very moving and hard to read for its sheer realism description of the process of crucifiction) and you begin to notice very sinister figures observing you.  You do not understand how he brought back Lazarus to life (this section of the work is  simply brilliant) but you live in a world before science and you know you don't understand everything.   Then you witness the people of your community scream with joy when he is executed in a horribly cruel very public fashion.

The story is told in Mary's old age.   She is being taken care of by followers of her son, who are in the process of writing, in part at least, what will become The New Testament.  It seems almost like she is their captive but they do take care of her.  Of course in her mind if not for them her son could have married and taken care of her.  We see her closeness to Mary Magdalene.   They want her to say that Jesus was the son of God.  There is so much pain in her story that she has a hard time even saying his name.

Mary knows her son's followers are trying to build him into a religious figure.   They want her to help them with the story.   She wants to tell what she sees as the truth before she dies.   To her it was his belief which caused him to be crucified and she feels if his followers had not pushed him he would have lived on.  Mary feels a great sense of rage and deprivation but she cannot express it other than in her testament.

This is a powerful potentially disturbing book.   The ending is very moving.  

I will say though I highly recommend the book for its quality, I think $11.98 is too much for a 98 pages e book.



Mel u

"Silence" and "Synge and his Family" by Colm Toibin

"Synge and his Family"  (2012, Chapter Four of New Ways to Kill Your Mother)
"Silence"     (2011)

The Irish Quarter

I am now firmly convinced that John M. Synge (1871 to 1909-most famously author of The Playboy of the Western World) is the third most important figure in modern Irish literary history.   I am still pondering how Lady Augusta Gregory, co-founder and patron of the Abby Theater, should be viewed.   Much of my current understanding of her was shaped by my reading of Lady Gregory's Toothbrush by Colm Toibin.  Clearly she was of at least two minds.   On the one hand she was deeply into Irish culture and on the other she as deeply aristocratic, she was very hard on her tenant farmers and basically romanticized the ordinary people of Ireland while looking down on them as individuals.   

"Silence" is  the lead story in Colm Toibin's most recent collection of short stories, The Empty Family.   In this story, which does not let us know who it was about until a few pages have gone by probably so we will not prejudge Gregory, we see how Gregory viewed herself.   We learn of her long term adultery, we learn a good bit about her marriage, and we see how society viewed her.   "Silence" is a very good story.   I think it helps if you know something about why Gregory matters and once you do maybe you will be able to understand her motivations a bit better.   If you want to read this story, you can download the sample eBook from Amazon. 

"Synge and His Family" is a biographical and literary essay from Toibin collection Nine Ways to Kill Your Mother.  ( I think in  Synge one should first read The Playboy of the Western World and then The Aran Islands, followed by the rest of his plays, there are only six and one is incomplete.)  Toibin's essay  is very interesting and I think anyone into Irish literature would profit from reading it.   He tries to "debunk" the notion that W. B. Yeats pushed Synge into going to the Aran Islands, explains his role as the "black sheep" of the family and his long term dependency on his mother.  HE also helps one to understand why his famous play was so controvesial when it was first produced.  




Please share your experience with John Synge or Augusta Gregory with us.

"Sounds ever so dull to me"
Carmilla

Mel U

Lady Gregory's Toothbrush by Colm Toibin

Lady Gregory's Toothbrush by Colm Toibin  (2002, 82 pages-Biography)

Lady Gregory's Toothbrush by Colm Toibin centers on the life of Augusta Gregory (1852 to 1932, Galway, Ireland).   Lady Gregory, she got her title when she married Sir William Gregory, thirty five years her senior,one time governor of Ceylon and considered to have been instrumental in passing laws while a member of parliament that made the fates of the Irish peasants much worse during the famine years.   Gregory, partially thorough and maybe largely through her contact with William Butler Yeats and John M. Synge, came to idolize and romanticize those same peasants while never abandoning the sense of entitlement her marriage gave her.   She is sometimes seen as a hypocritcal figure who spoke of her love for freedom and her wish for a better life for the peasants of Ireland while clinging to her  big house, her Anglo-Irish money and her view of real life ordinary Irish people outside of her small circle as unwashed people who mostly did not own toothbrushes.

Lady Gregory helped found and directed the famous Abby Theater in London.   Toibin does a great job of explaining why this theater was very important in the creation of a sense of Irish identity through plays like The Playboy of the Western World by John Synge.  When the play was first preformed there were riots at the Abby Theater, partially caused by references to Irish women in "shifts" and by its seeming portrayal of the Irish as loving violence country buffoons .   Lady Gregory, as Toibin explains it, referred to the conflict over this play as the battle between those who use a toothbrush, the play's supporters, and those who do not.  Like many an aristocrat who cry out their love for the common man, she liked them best in plays and stories.

Toibin help me greatly to understand the importance of Lady Gregory to Irish Theater.  Even though it can be argued that she was simply a rich woman buying attention from literary greats with money she inherited from a man who exploited horribly the Irish peasants, there import in the great plays of Synge and O'Casey can be directly traced to her.   She did not just give money, she worked very hard to promote the theater and was a still respected student of Irish folklore.   It is hard to really determine Yeats true feeling for her, he needed her money so everything has to a bit ambiguous.  Toibin handles this brilliantly without forcing an opinion on us.

Toibin's prose is as one would expect wonderful.   Lady Gregory's Toothbrush for sure increased my understanding of the Irish culture.   I am starting to understand more and more the central import of the plays of John Synge and Toibin was very illuminating in his remarks on Synge.   I also learned a good bit more about the background of William Butler Yeat's great poems concerning the death of Lady Gregory's son, the most famous of which is "An Irish Airmen Foresees His Death".

This book was a great pleasure to read.  Toibin also lets us see that Lady Gregory, with deep Anglo-Irish aristocratic roots, her money came directly from Irish peasants working in near slave conditions for her husband and his ancestry, was trying desperately to produce an Irish identity for herself while keeping her deeply entrenched belief that she, along with her primary mentor and patronage recipient, were of an old the natural heirs of an Irish aristocracy going back to the Celts and beyond.  In Lady Gregory's jest about a toothbrush, one seems beneath layers of pretense.

I very much enjoyed this book, learned a lot from it, and I endorse it to anyone interested in Irish literature or history.

It is available from Lilliput Press, Ireland's leading independent publishing house.  A perusal of their catalog is itself a great learning experience.

Mel u

Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin

Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin (2007, a collection of nine short stories)

Irish Short Story Week Year Two

March 11 to July 1

Event Resources

My Prior Posts for ISSW Year Two

Posts by Participants


Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week.   All of the resources you need to participate, including links to 1000s of stories,  is in the Event Resources.   Guests posts are very welcome.

April Prize for a Participant- I am happy to announce that a randomly selected participant in ISSW2 will receive a copy of the Frank O'Connor Prize listed work, Somewhere in Minnesota through the kindness of the author. Orfhlaith Foyle.  If you are a participant in the event please email me to be in the drawing for this wonderful collection of short stories.


The last work I read by Colm Toibin was his wonderful novel, Brooklyn, set in the 1950s about a young woman who moves from Ireland to Brooklyn.  I also read his very different work, which I loved, The Master, about the English years of Henry James.   Toibin has written a lot about Henry James.  I have also posted on  four of his short stories.  Mothers and Sons is the first of two collections of short stories he has published.


There are nine short stories in the collection, some of which have been previously published in literary journals.   I think the best way to post on a collection of short stories is through looking at some of  the individual short stories in the collection.   All of the stories deal with the relationship of an adult male to his mother.   I have already posted on two of the stories in the collection and the final piece in the collection is a novella and I will post on it at some point in the future.   All of these stories are very good.


"The Use of Reason" is almost a study in the banality of evil.  The son in the story is a professional thief and a career criminal since his early teenage years.   His mother is a drunk who trades on her son's reputation as a vicious thug to keep anyone from bothering her.  Where his father might be is anybodies guess.   His brother was killed in the commission of a crime.   The man has pulled of a tremendous robbery of world class proportions.  He has stolen three paintings, one of them a priceless Rembrandt.  The problem is he knows how to dispose of electronics, jewelery, and such but he has no clue what to do with a stolen Rembrandt.  He cannot exactly sell it for ten million in a local pub.  This story is simply brilliant in bringing to life a totally despicable character.  It was fascinating to see how his mind works.  His mother is so proud of him because he does not drink.  He seems to get little pleasure out of life and we can only wonder about the deeper aspects of his relationship with his terrible mother.   

"The Name of the Game"  is about a recently widowed woman with two daughters and a sixteen year old son who was left a house with a grocery store on the first floor and living quarters upstairs.   It is really mortgaged for more than it is now worth and the income from the grocery cannot really service the debt.   She never really managed the money side of the business when her husband was alive and now things are a mess until she starts a fish and chip business and converts the grocery to all cigarettes, beer and wine.   She starts to make really good money and she begins to plan her getaway to a life of anonymous comfort in Dublin, leaving the small town where everyone knows her business. Her sixteen year old son, in school but not interested at all, takes on a keen passion for the business and soon is really helping out and clearly wants to take over the business one day, even though his mother plans to see the business soon.   The really interesting part of this story, it kind of dragged at first for me, was when the business started doing great and when we see the son just needed to find his place in life.  The relationship between mother and son is really brilliantly depicted.

"Famous Blue Raincoat" is a very interesting story about the long term relationships of two sisters in a band.   It has a lot to say about family relationships and life in the music business.

"A Journey" is a about the relationship of a mother to her son born to her, her only child, after twenty years of marriage when he and her husband had given up all hope and truth be told a lot of interest in having a child.   The father seems pretty old and has suffered illnesses that make him an invalid.   Twenty years goes by in just a few paragraphs and the mother is bringing the son back from a seven month stay in a mental hospital, for depression.   This story is tells us a lot about what can happens when children are born late in a marriage.


"Three Friends", unlike any of the other stories, is in part x-rated for its graphic scenes of gay sex.  The story begins at a funeral for mother of Fergus.   We can see how Fergus tries to use sex to drive the pain of this lose from the forefront of his mind.   Of course it only works for a little while.

"A Summer Job" is my favorite story in Mothers and Sons.   The story covers about twenty or so years in the lives of a young man, his grandmother and his mother.   I thought it does a really brilliant job of showing how the young man develops a great love for his grandmother while at the same time he does what he can to establish his independence as he matures.   We see how his mother uses guilt on him to control and direct his actions and attitude.   

Mothers and Son is a really first rate collection of short stories and it is decent of the publisher and author to include a novella.   Toibin has another collection of short stories, The Empty Family, and I hope I will read and post on it during Irish Short Story Week Year Three (hopefully  from March 1 to July 1-I have to come up with a new name for the event by then!)


Do you have a favorite Toibin work?   Have you read any other his other novels?


Mel u

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (2009, 272 pages)

Brooklyn is the second novel by Colm Toibin I have read.  The first was The Master, based on the English years of Henry James.  I have also posted on two of his short stories.( Two participants in Irish Short Story Week Year Two-March 11 to July 1 have done excellent posts on Toibin and I will link to them at the end of this post).  Most of my reading and posting since March 11 has been devoted to the event but I am also reading novels and will post on them upon completion.  I will be keeping my posts on these works short for the duration of the event.

Brooklyn is set in the 1950s.  It is about a young Irish woman, Eilis, who moves from rural Ireland to Brooklyn in order make a better life for her self.  I was so interested in Eilis  that once I started Brooklyn I read it almost compulsively because I wanted to find out what would happened to her.  Normally I read a number of works at the same time, flipping from one to another (Ipads are great for people who read multiple works at a time) but once I started Brooklyn I stuck with it.  I kept hoping nothing really bad was going to happen to Eilis.

"Short Posts!-sounds good
to me"-Carmella

Toibin does a great job of showing how Eilis both seeks out a closed in morally judgmental venue just like she had in rural Ireland and is slowly opened up to new ways in America.   The trip to America in third class on a steam ship is brilliantly depicted.  There are lots of minor characters in the novel.  One of the really great ones is Georgia, an Irish lady who shares a cabin with Eilis.  Georgia has been coming home from American once a year for twenty years.  At first Eilis is pretty intimidated by her and she does seem like bit of a bully but by the end of the passage I really liked how she helped Eilis.  I felt bad when we parted company forever with her when the ship lands.

Eilis gets a job working in a big store and lives in a boarding house owned by an Irish woman and all of the other tenants are Irish women also.  The department store and its management are very interesting.

Eilis meets a man, a kind decent one but he is not Irish.  She goes to night school.   Brooklyn is very much about the immigrant experience.   It is about longing for home and the consequences of emigration on those who are left behind.  

Brooklyn is a very well done character driven novel.  There is enough plot action to make it interesting.  It is easy to follow and a pretty fast read.  

I liked this book a lot and will be reading more Toibin soon .

Lakeside Musings- "The Empty Family" by Colm Toibin


Tales from the Reading Room has done a great post on Colm Toibin's new book New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families.


Mel u

 

"A Priest in the Family" by Colm Toibin

"A Priest in the Family" by Colm Toibin (2007, 18 pages)

Irish Short Story Week

March 11 to May 1

April 1 to April 6-Priest Stories

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

My Prior Posts for ISSW Year Two

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, now open until at least May 1.  All you are asked to do is post on one Irish Short Story or a related matter and let  me know about it.   There are lots of ideas and links to stories in the resources page.    If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment.   I welcome guest post also, just contact me.  

"A Priest in the Family"  by Colm Toibin- (Wexford Ireland, 1955), from Mothers and Son, 2007,  is a story of the human side of the terrible scandal in the Irish Catholic Church involving sexual abuse of young boys, often alter boys.   Today's lead article in the online edition of the Sydney Morning Herald informs us that the Vatican has now mandated that all those in training to be priests in Ireland must undergo extensive training in ways to combat child abuse and deal with the urges they may have.   Priests have been directed to report cases of abuse they know of not to their local bishops but directly to the Vatican for fear of more cover ups.   I am a Catholic, not the best of ones, as are 80 percent of the people in the Philippines.   After the mass all the children go up to the priest to be blessed.   You can see the happiness in their faces and it makes the parents feel good also.  Sadly people are now reluctant for their sons to be alter boys, where it once was an source of family pride.    

"A Priest in the Family" is, as we could expect, a perfect gem of a story.   It is about the consequences for the family of a priest, a man well into middle years,wen he is exposed as a child molester.   The story is coming out in the paper and it will have to be announced in the Mass why the priest is being removed from his position.  The priest has come home to talk to his mother and tell her what is going to happen.   The siblings of the priest also are there.   They talk about how they will explain this to their children, who were always so proud to have a priest for an uncle.   It gave them special status.   

The siblings want there mother, now a widow and there are remarks in passing that it is good their father passed away before this happened, to go on a long trip out of the country until the scandal blows over.  The mother asks her son what will happen to him.   In a very sad moment in a very sad story she asks him if he will  be able to say Mass in prison.  

Join Us-Carmilla

I am going to have a week dedicated the stories in this collection soon.  I have already posted on a beautiful story from the collection, "The Song" and provided a link in that post where you could hear Toibin read the story.   I have also read and posted on his  great novel based on the London years of Henry James, The Master.   I have a Kindle edition of his novel Brooklyn and hope to read it soon.

This is the last Irish Short Story I will post on for the stories about priests segment.   We will next have stories by Ivan Turgenev and Anton Chekhov.   In The Lonely Voice it seems Frank O'Connor favors the stories of Turgenev over Chekhov though it is clear he regards them as the best two short story writers that ever lived.   I will post latter in the event on stories by James Stephens, George Moore and William Carleton that center on priests.

Julian Barnes in his great book, The Best of Frank O'Connor says the next story in "Stories About Priests" is the most Irish of Chekhov's stories.


Mel u

Two Wonderful Podcasts of Stories by Colm Toibin and Elizabeth Bowen

Two Brand New Podcasts of  Short Stories

by Elizabeth Bowen and Colm Toibin

Posted in Honor of Mothering Day In the UK

Irish Short Story Week Year Two

March 12 to March 31

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week 

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 31.  All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or an email and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge.   

The Manchester Guardian, one of the very best online newspapers in the world, has given those who love the Irish Short Story a wonderful Mothering Day gift in the form of PodCasts of short stories by Elizabeth Bowen and Colm Toibin, both are about a mother and child relationship.   Both are flat out great stories.   

I will post the links where you can hear the stories, both are under twenty minutes.   My comments on the stories will be brief as I really want to let everyone know of these stories.  

"Please join us, and no Rory I do
not need a custom shoe fitting"
Carmella

"The Song" is both written and read by Colm Toibin.  It is the first time I have heard his voice and it is very Irish and very pleasant.  There is always something special about an author reading his own story!   The mother in the song deserted her family 19 years ago, leaving them to go to England with another man.   The family never heard from her.  The son was raised alone by her father who was turned very bitter by this.   I do not want to give away too much of the story as it is wonderful but in the intervening 19 years the mother produced an album of Celtic and Irish songs that is said to be the best and most beautiful such album ever produced.   She became in musical circles world famous but she never looked up or asked about her son.  When we meet him he and his mates are going to play in their band at a local bar.   I will leave the rest of the story for you to hear if you like.   If you do please post on it and let me know.

"Carmella, lets bury the
hatchet, let me fit you for  some
custom boots"

You can listen to the story HERE.  It is 18.5 minutes long.  There is a simply stunning 30 second or so addition to the story possible only in a podcast that really left me almost in shock

"Homecoming" by Elizabeth Bowen (read by Tessa Hadley) is a particularly good thing to find as there is so little of Bowen's work that one can read or listen to online as she is not yet in the public domain.   "Homecoming" is a gem of a story told from the point of view of a young girl, the age is not given but she seems from seven to ten or so.   She has just come home from school and has some exciting news to give her mother but she gets really mad when her mother is not home.   She is first mad then she gets worried.  There is servant who tries to do her job and humor the girl but she gets nowhere.   The servant child relationship is a very subtle account of class distinctions.  I admit I sighed when the child says to herself  "life is just a long wait for awfullness to happen".  

You can listen to the story HERE.  It is 18 minutes 44 seconds long.   It is perfectly narrated.  

Please feel free to post on either one of these stories.  I have just scratched the barest surface on these works.   

Mel u

"The News from Dublin" by Colm Toibin

"The News from Dublin" by Colm Toibin (2010, 28 pages)

21th Century Stories

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Toibin Speaks out on Immigration, the Catholic Church, and other issues

at the Sydney Writers Festival

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 31.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or and e mail and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge.  

Colm Toibin (1955, County Wexford, Ireland) is the author of several award winning novels, (I have previously posted on his novel based on the London years of Henry James, The Master)  essays and short stories.   He was the Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton before becoming the Mellon Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia.   He is the author of two highly praised collections of short stories,  Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family.   

"News From Dublin"  is one of the stories included in New Irish Short Stories by Colm Toibin, published in 2010.  "News From Dublin" is centered on a family, three brothers, one of them quite successful, one struggling along and one dying of TB.   There father is active in politics.   They have heard of a medical trial being done of a new drug that may safe their brother but it has not yet been approved by the Ministry of Health for general usage.   The brothers know that a political associate of their father is in fact the head of the public health department so they go to him to see if  he can tell them how to get the drug for their brother.   I will leave the story unspoiled.

"News From Dublin" is about family with deep emotional ties in an emotionally restrained culture. It is also about politics.  The level of the prose is very high.   The story is not at all hard to follow.  I hope to read more of the short stories of Toibin one day.

Please share your experiences with Toibin with us.

"Welcome to Irish Short Stories Week"     -
Carmella

Mel u