In the captivating stories that make up ''The Empty
Family'' Colm Toibin delineates with a tender and unique
sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of
individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their
history. 'I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices,
clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the
radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot
Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home
that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.'
From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind
of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman
reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city
that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of
Toibin's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories
of fleeing the past and returning home, of family
threads lost and ultimately regained. ''Exquisite...The
chief reason to read these stories is the peculiar power
of Colm Toibin's prose''. (''Telegraph'').
''Astonishingly precise, depicting complex and
conflicted states of mind with rare clarity''.
(''Observer''). ''Beautifully observed''. (''Sunday
Times''). Colm Toibin was born in Ireland in 1955.He is
the author of five other novels, including ''Brooklyn'',
''The Blackwater Lightship'' and ''The Master'', both of
which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a
collection of stories, ''Mothers and Sons''. |
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