BROOKLYN Colm Tóibín
Literatur Solasaldiak Tertulias literarias Literary Circle Errenteriako Biblioteka 2022.05.18
Colm Tóibín Colm Tóibín (born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. Tóibín is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in Manhattan and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2017. Tóibín was called "a champion of minorities" by Arts Council director Mary Cloake as Tóibín collected the 2011 Irish PEN Award. That same year John Naughton, of The Observer, included Tóibín in his list of Britain's three hundred "public figures leading our cultural discourse" — despite Tóibín being Irish. Tóibín has said his writing comes out of silence. He does not favour story and does not view himself as storyteller. He has said, "Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly."
Brooklyn Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Colm Tóibín's sixth novel, Brooklyn, is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself. Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America--to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland"--she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind
Reviews “Colm Tóibín's quiet intensity brings the past to life ” (The Guardian) “Tóibín, author of The Master , a fine-tuned novel on the lonely last years of Henry James, revisits, diminuendo, the wrenching finale ofThe Portrait of a Lady.” (Publishers Weekly)
Selected works Novels • • • • • • • • • •
The South, Serpent's Tail, 1990 The Heather Blazing, Picador, 1992 The Story of the Night, Picador, 1996 The Blackwater Lightship, McClelland and Stewart, 1999 The Master, Picador, 2004 Brooklyn, Dublin: Tuskar Rock Press, 2009 The Testament of Mary, Viking, 2012 Nora Webster, Scribner, 2014 House of Names, Scribner, 2017 The Magician, Viking, 2021
Interesting Links “The Country Girl”, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/09/colmtoibinbrooklyn Literary Podcast (in Spanish, Basque and ENGLISH): https://elrefugiodepapel.com https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-refugio-papel_sq_f1878858_1.html Our coordinator´s blog (ENG/ESP): https://donostiabookclub.blogspot.com