A Guest at the Feast uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet,where life and fiction overlap,where one can be inside writing and also outside of it.From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis,Tóibín delineates the bleakness and strangeness of life and also its richness and its complexity. As he reveals the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists and the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances,we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as the intricacies of Marilynne Robinson's fiction.The imprint of the written word on the private self,as Tóibín himself remarks,is extraordinarily powerful. In this collection,that power is gloriously alive,illuminating history and literature,politics and power,family and the self.
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780241970614Number of pages: 320Weight: 220 gDimensions: 194 x 126 x 36 mm
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Droll,careful reflections on Ireland,illness and religion in a welcome collection of essays...(the) melancholy elegance of the prose guarantees the reader's enjoymentErudite,forensic,moving and wry...the breadth of the collection is impressive: a snapshot of Irish society over decades; Buenos Aires,in the wake of thousands of'disappeared'people; Covid-era Venice . . .a lesson in how the right words in the right order can get to the truth of the matter (These essays) are always interesting and intelligent,written in an admirably clear prose free of academic jargon...journalism at its best. I learned a lot from them and am grateful for that. It's a collection to which I will surely return,just as I do to Orwell's,Ian Jack's,Ferdinand Mount's and Patrick Marnham'sA feast for the reader...the novelist applies his inquisitive and empathetic mind in wide-ranging series of essays,from the political to the poignant...(Toibin) seeks no lessons; he tries only to be good company on the page. (He succeeds.)Erudite essays from one of the world's finest writers...Throughout,the poetry of Tóibín's prose is as impressive as always. In (the) title piece,he writes that his mother was'what most of us still write for: the ordinary reader,curious and intelligent and demanding,ready to be moved and changed.'Readers like her will savor every page of this bookThe clarity of the novelist's descriptive ability shines through essays on topics ranging from his treatment for cancer to the joys of an empty Venice...On every subject,Tóibín's writing is what people these days inevitably describe as nuanced,a word that has become a kind of shorthand for expressing a person's rare ability to understand...the foibles of othersI love everything Colm Tóibín has written I wanted to read out loud,to fully savour writing that is so careful and so lyricalReading Irish novelist,playwright and poet Colm Tóibín is always a delightBoth epic and intimate...a moving portrait of three generations of sprawling,loving,fractious family life...a triumphA work of art,an emotional reckoning with a century of change
Colm Toibin
One of the most critically acclaimed of contemporary authors,Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist,poet and critic,whose work has scooped numerous literary awards and been nominated multiple times for the Booker Prize.
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