From Colm Tóibín, "one of the world's best living literary writers," (The Boston Globe), a brilliant new collection of nine short stories—many never before published.
Colm Toibin is a master of the short story, able to summon an extraordinary intensity of emotion in a brief tale. Described as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times), he brings to these stories an astonishing clarity and compassion. In “The Journey to Gallway,” a mother learns of the death of her son, a fighter pilot in WWII, and must travel from Dublin to share the news with his wife and their three now fatherless children. In “Sleep,” published in The New Yorker, two lovers part as one of them cannot acknowledge or face his grief and fear after the death of his brother. And in the title story death, again, is a central character as Maurice Webster travels to Dublin from Enniscorthy to petition the health minister for access to a new drug being tested for tuberculosis. Maurice’s younger brother is dying of TB, and this is the only hope.
Set in Spain, Ireland and America, these gorgeous stories explore longing, estrangement from family, grief, the pull of the past, and complex, transcendent love.
Table of Contents
The Journey to Galway (published in Faber Anthology)
A Free Man (new)
Sleep (published in The New Yorker)
The News from Dublin (published in Faber Anthology)
A Sum of Money (new)
Barton Springs (published in Marlene Dumas catalogue)
Summer of ‘38 (published in The New Yorker)
Five Bridges (published in The New Yorker)
The Catalan Girls (new)
