Colm Tóibín - Long Island (Picador, 2024) ***½

In "Long Island", the story of Eilis, the main character from Tóibín's earlier novel "Brooklyn", picks up again some twenty years later. She lives in the same neighbourhood as the Italian family of her husband Tony, with two grown-up children. When she finds out that her husband has made a child with another woman, and that the husband of that woman wants to dump the baby on her, Ellis needs time to think and get her life back together. She takes a long trip back to Ireland, to visit her mother in the company of her children. Also in Ireland, things are more complicated and stressful than anticipated. 

Tóibín is an excellent writer, which he demonstrates here again. The story has a good pace, the characters are well-rounded and nuanced, the plot twist and situations interesting. It's entertaining and easy to read, but it lacks the power and emotional devastation of some of his other novels. It is moving, but not gripping like som of his other work. 
 

Colm Tóibín - The Magician (Penguin, 2021) **½

Most novels I've read by Tóibín get their quality from the author's wonderful capacity of describing subtle emotional and relational developments in the lead characters, as in "The Testament Of Mary", "Brooklyn" or "Nora Webster". In "The Magician", his approach is different. He tells the story of the life of Thomas Mann, the German Nobel Prize Winner of literature and author of iconic novels such as "Death in Venice", "The Magic Mountain" and "The Buddenbrooks", but instead of using his successful stylistic narrator skills, Tóibín takes a more distant approach, describing and fictionalising the life of his main character. 

But that's a wrong characterisation: Thomas Mann is barely present in the novel, as if he's the absent person in his own biography. The various members of his family are far more present than Mann himself: his brother Heinrich, his mother Julia, his wife Katia, his wife's brother Klaus, his children Erika and Klaus. The background of the rise of nazism in Germany, the wars, the life and power of the elites and the rich are well depicted and give a great view of the context at that time, including the differences in political opinions within the same family. While brother Heinrich takes a very clear communist viewpoint, Thomas again is more reserved, apparently afraid to pronounce himself, more protective of his family and his literature. 

It is of course the choice of any author to switch styles, tone and approach with each novel. The distant style used here somehow blocked my own entry in the novel as a reader: I was watching it from the outside, instead of living it from the inside. And I doubt that this could have the idea from the beginning. 

Colm Tóibín - House Of Names (Viking, 2017) ****½

Irish author Colm Tóibín lives in a class of his own. With "Brooklyn", "Nora Webster" and "The Testament of Mary", he tells stories from a strong female perspective, in a velvety style and compassionate tone. His characters are subtle, nuanced, and real in the depth of their emotions and their relationship to other people. In those novels, there is no real evil, no real malevolence, yet he manages to create tension in his narrative, leaving the reader no choice but to keep reading.

In "House of Names", he brings us back to ancient times, to the legend of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. After Agamemnon has his daugher Iphigenia killed as a sacrifice to the gods in order to obtain military victory, their house is doomed. Clytemnestra seeks revenge, and allies herself with Agamemnon's enemy.

Tóibín does not tell us the story as we know it from the ancient Greek authors Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Homer, but he uses it as a springboard to tell his own story about love, loneliness and betrayal. As in his other novels, the main characters are only minor figures in a much broader context, that remains vague and uncertain. The ongoing wars are never truly explained, and neither are their causes clear. The characters move around each other, with different perspectives on good and bad, each caught in a web they never created, yet which they made more complex by their actions. And then at an even deeper level, the characters are prisoners of their own feelings, their own uncertainties and unspoken fears.

Tóibín's style is as usually exquisite. It is rhythmic, well-paced and lyrical.

One example to illustrate:

"An image came to him then of his mother and Aegisthus. He was not sure when it was, but it must have been the morning, a morning when he had come to the room earlier than usual, and his nurse at the doorway had pulled him back but not before he had caught a glimpse of his mother and Aegisthus, and saw them naked and making sounds like animals. The image stayed with him now, became as solid in his mind as the image of his father's face as it brightened when he returned, and the memory of his father's voice and the cheering all around, and the smell of horses and men's sweat and the sense of happiness he felt that his father was home".

... and appreciate how the entire tragedy is captured in young Orestes' mind: the conflicting feelings of betrayal and happiness, the reference to animals and horses in the shifting memories and feelings.

In "House Of Names", Colm Tóibín brings humanity in a Greek tragedy, not only by giving his characters a voice with today's sensitivities and psychological complexity, but also by making humans no longer the puppets of the gods, but the victims of their own doings.

Don't miss it!

Colm Tóibin - The Blackwater Lightship (Picador, 1999) ***

Because I was so enthralled by Irish author Colm Tóibín's latest novels, I bought this earlier work, "The Blackwater Lightship", shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. The story is about three generations of women who each have problems with the mother-daughter relationship. Because the son/grandson is dying from AIDS, the family now has to live together at the remote country house of the grandmother.

Like with his other novels, Tóibín is a master at creating real-life characters, people of flesh and blood, whose position you can understand, and even if you can't understand them, they are still presented as entirely plausible and natural. All the characters have own personality and even way of dialoguing: cynical, confrontational, conflict-avoiding ... but at a much deeper level they are thrown together by life itself. They have no other choice but to deal with the situation, and because of Declan's disease, they have to overcome their own all too human smallness to create something grander for the young man's last months.

Even if it's not his best novel - I think his writing style has much improved - its still above average by any standard. Tóibín is the master of the deep emotions of daily life and he loves all his characters. There is no evil to be spotted, unless in fate itself.

Recommended!

Colm Toíbín - Nora Webster (Viking, 2014) ****

In de late jaren '60, staat Nora Webster er alleen voor om haar kinderen op te voeden in Enniscorthy, Ierland, na het overlijden van haar man Maurice.

Toíbín is een van mijn favoriete schrijvers van het ogenblik, en ook al bereikt deze roman niet het niveau van "Brooklyn" of "The Testament Of Mary", de sensuele manier van schrijven, het schetsen van het portret van deze vrouw vol innerlijke conflicten, steekt ver boven de middelmaat uit.

Hij blijft de meester van de vrouwelijke psyche en de manier waarop hij Nora Webster beschrijft, met al haar onzekerheid en strijdlust, haar meegaandheid en onverzettelijkheid, haar gebrek aan empathie en haar liefde voor haar zoons, zijn gewoon schitterend. Een vrouw die haar anker kwijtraakt en die door haar directe omgeving enkel wordt bekeken als de vrouw van de overleden Maurice, een politiek actieve schoolmeester. Haar omgeving is haar goedgezind, maar trekt haar in richtingen die ze niet altijd wil inslaan, alsof ze het allemaal beter weten voor haar, terwijl ze zelf niet meer te bieden hebben dan parochiale dorpspolitiek en roddels.

Gaandeweg komt haar grootste dilemma aan bod, en dat is gebrek aan communicatie met haar zoons, en dan vooral met de jongste, Donal. Maar ergens is het ook de geschiedenis van Ierland, een verscheurd land vol kleinburgelijkheid en diepe idealen. Literatuurstudenten die de betekenis willen kennen van een "rond karakter", moeten Nora Webster lezen, een wereld van verschil met wat we gewend zijn in onze Nederlandse literatuur.

Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn (Scribner, 2010) ****½

Ik had recent Colm Tóibín al geroemd om zijn "The Testament Of Mary", een poëtische en fijnzinnige beschrijving van Maria na de kruisiging van Christus. "Brooklyn" brengt ons haar het begin van vorige eeuw, bij een Ierse familie bij wie de jongste dochter de kans krijgt om als verkoopster in de New York te gaan werken. Wat ze ook doet.

Op zich is dit wereldschokkend als plot, en er zijn zeker tientallen romans die deze grote oversteek beschrijven, inclusief vanuit het perspectief van de jongeling die familie en elk ander houvast moet achterlaten, maar wat Tóibín ervan maakt is wel absoluut uitzonderlijk. Ten eerste is alles en iedereen in het verhaal doodnormaal, er gebeurt niets schokkends, de personages zijn niet slecht en niet dom of niet uitzonderlijk, integendeel, ze zijn tegemoetkomend en vriendelijk, elk vanuit hun perspectief natuurlijk.

En toch is de beschrijving van de beleving van het hoofdpersonage, Eilis, iets unieks. Tóibín heeft een talent om gevoelens eenvoudig tot leven te brengen, met de kleine twijfels en de kleine zelfoverwinningen die daar bij horen. Tóibín houdt van elk van de personages die hij beschrijft. Bovendien is zijn vertelstijl precies en zijn verteltempo briljant, net snel genoeg om vooruit te gaan en traag genoeg om elke scène tot leven te brengen.

De hele roman is intimistisch en kleinmenselijk, maar het gaat voorbij het burgerlijke, naar de diepte van het menszijn en het leven.

Een verademing in het geweld van elke dag.

Colm Tóibín - The Testament Of Mary (Scribner, 2012) ****½

Ik weet niet wat het is met de Bijbelse figuren die mijn leven kruisen de laatste tijd. Ik heb pas deze "The Testament Of Mary" gelezen, of de nieuwe JM Coetzee "The Childhood Of Jesus" verschijnt - en binnenkort ook hier gerecenseerd.

"The Testament Of Mary" is een prachtige novelle van een tachtigtal bladzijden, geschreven met de fluwelen pen van de Ierse schrijver Colm Tóibín, van wie ik tot nu enkel "The Heather Blazing" had gelezen.

Op een bijna poëtische manier beschrijft Tóibín het leven van Jezus vanuit het perspectief van Maria, die de transformatie bij haar zoon opmerkt en zich zorgen maakt, die merkt hoe hij verandert en hoe mensen die ze niet kent naar hem vragen en hem op handen dragen, die zoon die ze niet langer kent ....

"I lived mostly in silence, but somehow the wildness that was in the very air, the air in which the dead had been brought back to life and water changed into wine and the very waves of the sea made calm by a man walking on water, this great disturbance in the world made its way like creeping mist or dampness in the two or three rooms I inhabited".


... maar ook liefheeft tot de dood.

"Thus the busy hill, so filled not long before with smoke and shouting, with cruelty and hard faces, now became a soft place for weeping. We held him and touched him, he who was both heavy and weightless, the blood all gone from his body, his body like marble or ivory in its rich paleness. His body was growing stiff and lifeless but some other part of him, what he had given us those last hours, what had come from his suffering, remained in the air around us like something sweet to comfort us".

Mary overschouwt de gebeurtenissen vanuit stilte, de onmogelijkheid om in te grijpen als ze alles fout ziet lopen met haar zoon van wie ze houdt. Een schitterend boekje dat je leest met een krop in de keel, ondanks het feit dat je de gebeurtenissen uiteraard kent. Respectvol en teder en prachtig geschreven.

Sterke aanrader.