adventures toothbrush go-between celebration

books:

6 reviews
Colm Toibin

Penguin (Non-Classics), 1994

A fine, glimmering brilliance
Kirkus Reviews blurb reprinted above is absolutely foolish. This is a magnificent novel, but one which, as Tobias Wolff has said, "repays attention", i.e., one must be willing to give oneself over to Toibin's deceptively simple prose. The cummulative affect of the chapters, as a picture of a life, is devastatingly poignant, but this poignance will only come through careful attention. A quiet ...

The New York Stories of Henry James (New York Review Books Classics)

1 review
Henry James

NYRB Classics, 2005

the partial image of a ghost of a story
I am a simple man. And when I read a story, I would like to have the entire story before me, and not be forced to go to the internet to find the rest of it!!!!!!! This volume, incredibly, omits the third and final chapter of "A Jolly Corner"! It was an intersting experience, accidentally, because reading it without the last chapter made one confront the basic construct of the tale. It seemed ...

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006: The Best Stories of the Year

1 review

Anchor Books, 2006

Editor Furman's darkest and best collection yet
As in her two previous volumes (2003, 2005 - there was no O. Henry Prize volume dated 2004, forever throwing a kink into the collection on my bookshelf), series editor Laura Furman has gravitated toward subject matter that can only be described as dark and depressing. Yet the stories are so well written that the net effect is one of being moved by the power of the written word to experience ...

The Master: A Novel

63 reviews
Colm Toibin

Scribner, 2005

Henry James's life in fiction
This book has gotten many detailed rave reviews, and I'll rave about it also, but I'd like to make this a more practical and useful review. I loved the book, but Henry James is one of my favorite authors. I've read several of his novels as well as seen the films and PBS versions. The American is one of my all time favorites. Colm Toibin brings James to life and takes you into his time. I really ...

The Portrait of A Lady (Signet Classics)

1 review
Henry James

Signet Classics, 2007

"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue."
When Isabel Archer, a bright and independent young American, makes her first trip to Europe in the company of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, who lives outside of London in a 400-year-old estate, she discovers a totally different world, one which does not encourage her independent thinking or behavior and which is governed by rigid social codes. This contrast between American and European values, ...

The Blackwater Lightship: A Novel

33 reviews
Colm Toibin

Scribner, 2001

Colm Toibin is a Master
Colm Toibin, author of "The Master", is an outstanding writer. After reading his novel about Henry James, I went back to read his earlier novels. I was truly moved by this book: character development was outstanding and complex, people were believable, and the intricate plot was mesmerizing. I recommend that anyone who liked "The Master" read this and his other earlier (and maybe even better ...

Hadji Murat (Hesperus Classics)

1 review
Leo Tolstoy

Hesperus Press, 2003

Sublime
Harold Bloom, the renowned literary critic, regards it as the sublime in prose. It has even been praised by Wittgenstein. In this story, Tolstoy details the surrender by Hadji Murat, a Chechen rebel, to the Russians, and what follows from this. It is written with all the insightfulness into such a situation that you would expect from Tolstoy, and should be of interest to anyone interested in War ...

Mothers and Sons: Stories

13 reviews
Colm Toibin

Scribner, 2008

Memorable stories
The thread that ties the beautifully written nine stories in this book together is that in each one there is a complex relationship between a mother and a son. I don't think that all of them `focus' on this relationship, as the blurb on the back has it, for only in four of the nine stories is it central. Rather, each one seems to me to focus on either the mother or the son; but whichever it ...

Novels I of Samuel Beckett: Volume I of The Grove Centenary Editions (Works of Samuel Beckett the Grove ...

1 review
Samuel Beckett

Grove Press, 2006

Great, Beautiful, Incomplete
This is a great collection of Beckett's novels, including: Murphy, Watt, and Mercier and Camier. Noticeably missing--and noted by Paul Auster in the editor's note--is Dream of Fair to Middling Women, published post-humously. This probably points to a rights issue with the Beckett estate, but that's conjecture. Auster notes that Beckett's "reputation rests" on the work included in this ...

The Go-Between (New York Review Books Classics)

19 reviews
L. P. Hartley

NYRB Classics, 2002

Beautiful
In the brutally hot summer of 1900, Leo Colston, aged 12, is invited by his friend Marcus Maudsley to stay at his family's estate, Brandham Hall. Marcus's sister Marian enlists Leo to carry letters back and forth between herself and her lover, Ted Burgess, a local farmer. At the same time, Marian becomes engaged to Lord Trimingham who, in the eyes of "polite" society, is a much better match for ...

The Return (Hesperus Classics)

1 review
Joseph Conrad

Hesperus Press, 2004

The Return
An interesting if unspectacular foreword which bespoke an entire cast of two characters-an added attraction was the demure innunendo thrown in that the lady did not think or speak much. The introduction by Colm Toibin mentions that Conrad was fascinated by the literary style( before he went into oblivion) of Henry James and this be the closest resemblance that JC could have to HJ. The story ...

Lady Gregory's Toothbrush

2 reviews
Colm Toibin

University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

Arrogance vs. ambiguity
The tension of the Anglo-Irish, Toibin argues, can be charted in Lady Gregory's own life, as she negotiated the difficult balancing act of a Coole landowner hosting balls for British nobles before going off to her next social engagement, a tea party for the ladies in the local workhouse. Speaking of the latter, the infamous if well-intended Famine-era "Gregory Act" enacted by her family, that ...

The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (Hesperus Classics)

2 reviews
George Bernard Shaw, Colm Toibin

Hesperus Press, 2007

Surprising
I had never heard of this book and was expecting something quite different from what was presented...you know black savage being saved and enlightened by her white "betters" what I found was something quite different a black character who is intelligent, thoughtful and able to think for herself, highly recommended

Ruslan and Lyudmila (Hesperus Classics)
Alexander Pushkin

Hesperus Press, 2005

This new verse translation of Pushkin's first major work is a fantastic narrative poem based on Russian folklore that later inspired Glinka's famous opera. Spirited away by the evil sorcerer Chernomer, Lyudmila awaits rescue by her beloved Ruslan. Before he can secure her release, however, the gallant Ruslan must first endure all the trials and tribulations that a malevolent world can throw at him. Full of daring adventure, and peopled with an ...

Sean Scully: Walls of Aran

2 reviews
Sean Scully

Thames & Hudson, 2007

Sean Scully as Sean Scully - and that is enough
Sean Scully has had a successful career for the past few decades painting what he loves most: line and bars of color that are immediately recognizable as his work but at the same time presenting an endless exploration of light and color using this format the way a conjurer would. His paintings have not varied in style but his palette his grown progressively more sophisticated. This major ...

The Story of the Night: A Novel

26 reviews
Colm Toibin

Scribner, 2005

A Timelessly Important Yet Also A Timely Novel
2005 and Argentina has just revoked amnesty for those responsible for the brutality and occult treachery of the Dirty War that ended with the overthrow of the military junta with the British defeat of Argentina's forces over the Falkland Islands. And it is during this closure of a long suppressed circle that Colm Toibin's superb 1995 book THE STORY OF THE NIGHT comes back into circulation. By ...

Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature

5 reviews
Colm Toibin

Scribner, 2004

Colm Tóibín, May His Tribe Increase!
Once captured by the liquid, informed prose of Colm Tóibín it is difficult to ignore anything this brilliant writer has written. Still under the spell of 'The Master' and having just sadly finished 'The Story of the Night' (that novel could have been extended another 300 pages!), it seemed only appropriate to read an investigative work, just to see how this man's mind absorbs and dissects the ...

The South: 2

1 review
Colm Toibin

Viking Adult, 1991

Quiet and moving
Spare and soothing, quiet and sadly moving. I really liked this book because it was haunting - the descriptions of Spain and the sadness of a woman watching the man she loves be destroyed by the SPanish Civil War. Quite good.

Synge: A Celebration

Carysfort Press, 2006

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