The Empty Family

Stories

Fiction & Literature, Short Stories, Literary
Cover of the book The Empty Family by Colm Toibin, Scribner
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Colm Toibin ISBN: 9781439149836
Publisher: Scribner Publication: January 4, 2011
Imprint: Scribner Language: English
Author: Colm Toibin
ISBN: 9781439149836
Publisher: Scribner
Publication: January 4, 2011
Imprint: Scribner
Language: English

Colm Tóibín’s exquisitely written new stories, set in present-day Ireland, 1970s Spain and nineteenthcentury England, are about people linked by love, loneliness and desire. Tóibín is a master at portraying mute emotion, intense intimacies that remain unacknowledged or unspoken. In this stunning collection, he cements his status as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times).

“Silence” is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, widowed and abandoned by her lover, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party. In “Two Women,” an eminent Irish set designer, aloof and prickly, takes a job in her homeland, and is forced to confront devastating emotions she has long repressed. “The New Spain” is the story of an intransigent woman who returns home after a decade in exile and shatters the fragile peace her family has forged in the post-Franco world. And in the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a startling relationship between two Pakistani workers in Barcelona—a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence.

Tóibín’s characters are often difficult and combative, compelled to disguise their vulnerability and longings. Yet he unmasks them, and in doing so offers us a set of extraordinarily moving stories that remind us of the fragility and individuality of human life. As The New York Review of Books has said, Tóibín “understands the tenuousness of love and comfort—and, after everything, its necessity.”

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Colm Tóibín’s exquisitely written new stories, set in present-day Ireland, 1970s Spain and nineteenthcentury England, are about people linked by love, loneliness and desire. Tóibín is a master at portraying mute emotion, intense intimacies that remain unacknowledged or unspoken. In this stunning collection, he cements his status as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times).

“Silence” is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, widowed and abandoned by her lover, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party. In “Two Women,” an eminent Irish set designer, aloof and prickly, takes a job in her homeland, and is forced to confront devastating emotions she has long repressed. “The New Spain” is the story of an intransigent woman who returns home after a decade in exile and shatters the fragile peace her family has forged in the post-Franco world. And in the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a startling relationship between two Pakistani workers in Barcelona—a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence.

Tóibín’s characters are often difficult and combative, compelled to disguise their vulnerability and longings. Yet he unmasks them, and in doing so offers us a set of extraordinarily moving stories that remind us of the fragility and individuality of human life. As The New York Review of Books has said, Tóibín “understands the tenuousness of love and comfort—and, after everything, its necessity.”

More books from Scribner

Cover of the book Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book For Whom the Bell Tolls by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book They Were Like Family to Me by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Unholy Dying by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Nothing with Strings by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book At Death's Door by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book To Cork or Not To Cork by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Salt Dancers by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Memory Wall by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Chuck Klosterman IV by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book The Dark Tower V by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Inside of a Dog by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Bare Bones by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Bored to Death by Colm Toibin
Cover of the book Sirius by Colm Toibin
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy