![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In the Spotlight: Colm Toibin
Apr. 1st, 2009 09:30 am
The Book: Like Michael Cunningham in The Hours, Colm Tóibín captures the extraordinary mind and heart of a great writer. Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of a man born into one of America's first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers. In stunningly resonant prose, Tóibín captures the loneliness and the hope of a master of psychological subtlety whose forays into intimacy inevitably failed those he tried to love. The emotional intensity of this portrait is riveting.
"The work of a first-rate novelist artful, moving and very beautiful." -- The New York Times Book Review
"A spectacular novel." -- Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
"A gorgeous portrait of a complex and passionate man." -- Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
"Tóibín takes us almost shockingly close to the mystery of art itself. A remarkable, utterly original book." -- Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
"A marvel." -- John Updike, The New Yorker
"A deep, lovely, and enthralling book that engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life." -- Shirley Hazzard, author of The Great Fire
Amazon: The Master: A Novel
( Other Books in the List )
The Author: Colm Tóibín (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkɔl̪ˠəmˠ t̪ˠoːˈbʲiːnʲ]) (born 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland) is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist and critic. Colm Tóibín was born in the southeast of Ireland. He was the second youngest of five children. His grandfather, Patrick Tobin, was a member of the Irish Republican Army, as was his grand-uncle Michael Tobin. Patrick Tobin took part in the 1916 Rebellion in Enniscorthy and was subsequently interned in Frongoch in Wales. Colm Toibin's father was a teacher who was involved in the Fianna Fáil party in Enniscorthy.
Tóibín received his secondary education at St Peter's College, Wexford, where he was a boarder between 1970 and 1972. He progressed to University College Dublin, and graduated in 1975. Immediately after graduation, he left for Barcelona.
Tóibín's first novel, 1990's The South, was partly inspired by his time in the Barcelona; as was, more directly, his non-fiction Homage to Barcelona (1990). Having returned to Ireland in 1978, he began to study for a Masters. However, he did not submit his thesis and left academia, at least partly, for a career in journalism.
The early 1980s were an especially bright period in Irish journalism, and the heyday for the monthly news magazine Magill. Tóibín became the magazine's editor in 1982, and remained in the position until 1985.
The Heather Blazing (1992), his second novel, was followed by The Story of the Night (1996) and The Blackwater Lightship (1999). His fifth novel, The Master (2004), is a fictional account of portions in the life of author Henry James. In 2006 his first collection of short stories was published as Mothers and Sons, and was reviewed favourably (including by Pico Iyer in The New York Times). He is the author of other non-fiction books: Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1994), (reprinted from the 1987 original edition) and The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994).
He has written a play that was staged in Dublin in August 2004, Beauty in a Broken Place.
He has continued to work as a journalist, both in Ireland and abroad. He has also achieved a reputation as a literary critic: he has edited a book on Paul Durcan, The Kilfenora Teaboy (1997); The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999); and has written The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950 (1999), with Carmen Callil; a collection of essays, Love in A Dark Time: Gay lives from Wilde to Almodóvar (2002); and a study on Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002).
Tóibín is a member of Aosdána and has been visiting professor at Stanford University, The University of Texas at Austin and Princeton University. He has also lectured at several other universities, including Boston College and New York University. In 2008 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) at the University of Ulster in recognition of his contribution to contemporary Irish Literature. (From Wikipedia)
http://www.colmtoibin.com/
Top 100 Gay Novels List (*)
External Link to the Top 100 Gay Novels List (simple - without photos)
External Link to the Top 100 Gay Novels List (wanted - with photos)
*only one title per author, only print books released after January 1, 2000.
Other titles not in the top 100 list:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/top5
The Book: Like Michael Cunningham in The Hours, Colm Tóibín captures the extraordinary mind and heart of a great writer. Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of a man born into one of America's first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers. 
The Author: Colm Tóibín (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkɔl̪ˠəmˠ t̪ˠoːˈbʲiːnʲ]) (born 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland) is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist and critic. 
Special Delivery is a short story and probably doesn't want to be more than an enjoyable break. The story is quite simple and the mystery quite obvious: Jeff is an undercover special agent who is playing the role of a delivery guy (like UPS or similar) and has to discover and illegal drugs dealing in a small town USA. They only know that one of the shop on the main street is probably the center of the traffic, and posing as a delivery guy is a good way to find out things.
Special Delivery is a short story and probably doesn't want to be more than an enjoyable break. The story is quite simple and the mystery quite obvious: Jeff is an undercover special agent who is playing the role of a delivery guy (like UPS or similar) and has to discover and illegal drugs dealing in a small town USA. They only know that one of the shop on the main street is probably the center of the traffic, and posing as a delivery guy is a good way to find out things.