Mothers and Sons
-
-
3.5 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $8.99
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
"Tóibin is a writer of extraordinary emotional clarity... These are beautiful stories, beautifully crafted" Literary Review
Mothers and Sons is a sensitive and beautifully written meditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental of relationships. Each of the nine stories focuses on a moment in which an unspoken balance shifts; in which a mother or son do battle, or experience a sudden crisis, thus leaving their conception of who they are subtly or seriously altered.
A son buries his mother and goes out to a drug-fuelled rave on a remote beach near Dublin. In the course of this one night his grief and desire for raw feeling combine with exquisite intensity. A mother sings about treacherous love to a rapt crowd of musicians in a local pub. Her unacknowledged son meets her eyes, unable to approach her. And in A Long Winter, Colm Tóibin's finest piece of fiction to date, a son goes searching for his mother in the snow-covered Pyrenees.
Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive, each finely wrought story teases out the delicate and difficult strands woven between mothers and sons. This is an acute, masterful and moving collection that confirms Tóibin as a great prose stylist of our time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though not a grand storyteller or a consummate imitator of various voices and cadences, Gerard Doyle's introspective and masterful reading of most of Toib n's short stories is nearly perfect. Doyle's assured voice fits Toib n's characters, who think more than they act, fail to communicate with those closest to them and prefer their own company to that of others. There is little dialogue since people feel they can confide in no one, even their own mother or son. Doyle phrases the stories carefully in order to highlight the rich nuances and stark lighting and scenery. The stories end abruptly, with the characters on the verge of, rather than at the end of, some transformative experience. Therefore, the extra long pauses between stories are welcome. Unfortunately, Doyle loses some of his power in the last story, "A Long Winter," which is set in Spain, but in which, oddly, Doyle affects a Slavic accent. Nevertheless, Toib n's consummate writing skills are not to be missed by lovers of serious literature. Simultaneous release with Scribner hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 16).
