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Brooklyn |
This book was lauded by many critics and won last year's Costa Novel Award. I find it hard to understand why but then I read it right after The Lacuna so that probably explains it. Members of my book group either more than loathed it or loved it. I thought the style irritating, the characters cardboard and just wonder if any of you have read it and whether you agree or disagree.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 56 Spring 2010) |
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Brooklyn |
Despite Jenny's reservations in her review in bwl 56, this for me was an absorbing exposition of how situations, the plans of others and our own vulnerabilities draw a person into making fateful choices in life and it passed the "what happens next?" test. The limitations of life in rural Ireland and among those clinging on in Brooklyn are convincingly portrayed although one development stretches credulity a bit. A clear and gripping story.
(Tony Pratt - bwl 72 Spring 2014) |
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Nora Webster |
Step by step we follow Nora's life after the death of her beloved husband. She's no stereotyped weeping widow - Tóibin's inside knowledge (his father died when he was twelve) illuminates her fierce clinging to her own dignity, her stunned incapacity to be close to her children and her gradual discovery of another possible self. Written with quiet poetry and without obvious drama this intimate exploration of Nora's reality is nevertheless a subtly dramatic story. Compelling.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 75 Winter 2015) |
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The Magician |
Epic novels about real people are not uncommon but never, perhaps, has fiction been better employed than in Toibin's masterful life of German author, Thomas Mann. From Death in Venice, we know about the supressed desires of the protagonist, Aschenbach. In the Magician, Toibin paints this fearful and hesitant behaviour across the life of its author, thereby capturing the profound personal conflict of a very public life set against the violence of C20th German history.
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 103 Winter 2022) |
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The Testament of Mary* |
A mother's lament for her son's short life and the terrifying cruelty of his death. She is limited in her understanding of the how and why of his behaviour with his 'friends', as he moves inexorably towards an inevitable end. Surrounded by spies watching his every action, she feels compelled to secretly follow him. Despite the euphoria of those who believe he is 'the chosen one', she cannot comprehend what is happening. Searingly powerful and deeply thought provoking.
*shortlisted for the 2013 Booker prize
(James Baker - bwl 74 Autumn 2014) |
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