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This dispatch from what we might call the extended Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn<\/a> universe is set near the same time and in the same place as his earlier novel Brooklyn (one character appears in both books). It\u2019s the story of a widowed woman who struggles to cope with life after love. If it lacks the drama of some of T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s other novels, the style is impeccable as ever, with irresistibly clean prose that reports emotional turmoil masked by restraint. There is no ornate showing off. \u201cPeople used to\u00a0tease me for it, saying: \u2018Could you write a longer sentence?\u2019\u201d T\u00f3ib\u00edn has said. \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing I can do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This short novel began as a play, which later became a Broadway flop. Tourists, observed T\u00f3ib\u00edn, are \u201cgoing to take in only one Broadway show, and Bette Midler had just opened around the corner\u201d. Jesus\u2019s mother Mary is recalling the events around his\u00a0crucifixion. T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s Mary is not meek and mild, but hardened by her experience, suspicious of his miracles and despairing of the followers who will take her son away from her. This is a rare first-person narrative for T\u00f3ib\u00edn, and his quiet style sometimes muffles the emotions Mary feels at Jesus\u2019s suffering. In the end it\u2019s a book not just about biblical figures, but about how strange our children become to us.<\/p>\n T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s second novel shows that his \u201cdeadpan\u201d style was there from the start: \u201cyou\u2019re never sure where the laughter is going to come from or where the sadness is\u201d, as he described it to the Paris Review. There\u2019s more sadness here than laughter \u2013 apart from the joke that it always seems to be raining. It\u2019s the story of High Court judge Eamon Redmond, a\u00a0conservative man in 1980s Ireland, where the next generation \u2013 including his children \u2013 is\u00a0agitating for reform on\u00a0social issues such as divorce and abortion. This book is also, says T\u00f3ib\u00edn, \u201cthe most direct telling of the grief and numbness\u201d he felt as a child at his \u201cabandonment\u201d when his mother left the family for many months to attend his sick father in hospital.<\/p>\n T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s motto might be: If it\u2019s not\u00a0one thing, it\u2019s your mother. Redoubtable mothers loom large in his\u00a0work, and this is a whole book of stories about mothers and their sons. The best are novella-length \u2013 T\u00f3ib\u00edn is a novelist at heart \u2013 including one which features early appearances of Nancy and Jim from Brooklyn. These are stories of complicated love, laced with dark comedy. In one, a gangster with a drunken mother is selling stolen paintings to two Dutch criminals. One of the men, his associate tells him, \u201ccould kill you in\u00a0one second with his bare hands\u201d. \u201cWhich of them?\u201d he asks. \u201cThat\u2019s the\u00a0problem,\u201d comes the reply. \u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know.\u201d<\/p>\n If T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s fiction tends toward low-key gloom, this novel about a gay\u00a0Argentinian man of English ancestry is his happiest. Richard Garay frequently enjoys himself, especially now that his mother is dead. There\u2019s a gusto in his resentment of her (\u201cI am using, with particular relish, the heavy cotton sheets she was saving for some special occasion\u201d) and an animal delight in his appreciation of the bodies of the men he loves. Even the darker stuff here \u2013 abductions, the fallout of the Falklands war \u2013 is described with almost cheerful energy.<\/p>\n It catapulted T\u00f3ib\u00edn from\u00a0acclaimed literary novelist to bestseller, with the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman in\u00a01950s Ireland who seems utterly passive in her life. At least, that is, until she goes to the US \u2013 the sea crossing is a comic highlight, featuring motion sickness and a shared bathroom \u2013 and defies her family\u2019s plans for her. T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s sensitive touch means Eilis feels like a real person, even when we want to give her a good shake. Adapted into a film in 2015 starring Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn delivers satisfying emotional tension despite its restrained heroine. It\u2019s little\u00a0wonder it has become T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s best-loved book.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s sequel to Brooklyn takes up Eilis\u2019s story 20 years on. It\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0more rounded novel, with a greater range of characters fully on display, and Eilis seems to have found some bottle in the intervening years. \u201cCan you not control her?\u201d her brother-in-law asks her husband, when she argues with their father. It\u2019s\u00a0also a portrait of a changing Ireland in the 1970s. And although T\u00f3ib\u00edn dislikes traditional historical fiction (\u201cI hate people \u2018capturing the period\u2019\u201d), he does capture the period beautifully, with a wealth of detail \u2013 including the introduction of the toasted cheese sandwich to Ireland\u2019s\u00a0pubs.<\/p>\n T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s fourth novel is clear, contained and complex. It is set in his\u00a0literary comfort zone of coastal County Wexford, but there\u2019s nothing complacent about this story, where traditional Ireland \u2013 singalongs with bodhr\u00e1n drums \u2013 meets the modern crisis of Aids. It tells of three generations of women trying to get along together as a young man in their family dies. But it is also an acutely observed portrait of parenting young children (more mothers and sons), a\u00a0retelling of the Greek myth of Orestes, Electra and Clytemnestra, and a rendering of T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s own childhood suffering around the sickness and death of his father. \u201cI\u00a0think if you\u2019re not working, as\u00a0a\u00a0novelist, from some level of subconscious pain,\u201d he has said, \u201cthen a thinness will get into your book.\u201d<\/p>\n T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s longest novel is also one of\u00a0his most gripping. This book about Thomas Mann is an exceptional achievement in imaginative empathy, covering six decades of the writer\u2019s life: his self-regard, his literary genius, and the concealed love for beautiful young men that he subsumed into works such as Death in Venice. T\u00f3ib\u00edn shows Mann as calcified by his public austerity (at his mother\u2019s funeral, his daughter sees him cry for the first time). T\u00f3ib\u00edn likes to poke fun at his own austere reputation. He writes, he once said<\/a>, on a chair that is \u201cone of the most uncomfortable ever made. After a day\u2019s work, it causes pain in parts of the body you did not know existed\u201d \u2013 but \u201cit keeps me awake\u201d.<\/p>\n T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s masterpiece \u2013 to date \u2013 explores the inner life of Henry James, a\u00a0man who was \u201ca mass of ambiguities\u201d. The novel covers five years in James\u2019s life, beginning with\u00a0the failure of his 1895 play Guy Domville, but its scope is vast, teasing apart the public and private man. \u201cEveryone he knew carried within them the aura of another life which was half secret and half open, to be known about but not mentioned.\u201d James loves gossip and secrets but keeps his own hidden. \u201cIt was the closest he had come,\u201d he recalls, thinking of one abandoned episode of\u00a0attraction to another man, \u201cbut\u00a0he\u00a0had not come close at all.\u201d The\u00a0Master is subtle, funny, ingenious and\u00a0emotionally wrenching. T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u00a0even took enough influence from James to \u2013 finally \u2013 write in long\u00a0sentences.<\/p>\n