From Colm Tóibín comes New Ways to
Kill Your Mother, a fabulously entertaining book
about writers and their
families.
In this wonderfully
entertaining and enlightening collection, Colm Tóibín
not only explores the often tense relationship between
writers and their families but also conveys, with a rare
tenderness and wit, the great joy of reading their work.
Here is W.B. Yeats harshly responding to his own
father's literary efforts; Thomas Mann ruining his
children's prospects; Tennessee Williams haunted by his
sister's mental illness; and John Cheever being beastly
to his wife. Praise for New Ways to Kill Your
Mother: 'A brilliant book...Tóibín is a
supple, subtle thinker, alive to hints and undertones,
wary of absolute truths' Robert Hanks, New
Statesman
'A penetrating and often
very funny inquiry into the fraught complicity
between parent and child, brother and sister' Daily
Telegraph
'Insightful and
compassionate, assured and knowledgeable, never less
than fascinating. An impressive, fine and engaging
collection' Independent on
Sunday
Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland
in 1955. He is the author of seven novels, including The
Master which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize ,
Brooklyn which won the Costa Novel Award and, most
recently, The Testament of Mary, and two volumes of
short stories. His non-fiction includes Lady Gregory's
Toothbrush and Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde
to Almovodar. He is a contributing editor at the London
Review of Books and has been visiting writer at
Stanford, Princeton, the University of Texas at Austin
and Manchester University. He is currently Mellon
Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English
and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University.
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