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Mothers and Sons

3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 · rating details · 690 ratings · 108 reviews

Each of the nine stories in this beautifully written, intensely intimate collection centers on a transformative moment that alters the delicate balance of power between mother and son, or changes the way they perceive one another. With exquisite grace and eloquence, Tóibín writes of men and women bound by convention, by unspoken emotions, by the stronghold of the past. Man...more

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published January 2nd 2007 by Scribner (first published January 1st 2006)

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Community Reviews

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Mar 27, 2008 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was impressed with every story in this collection. I greatly admire Toibin's insights into his very real characters and their relationships, his very subtle use of imagery, and the way he crafts his stories. Even a 'simple' turn of phrase of his engenders my respect. I love his writing and become more impressed (if that's possible!) every time I read something else by him.

*

Addendum:
This quote about Toibin and this collection is what I was trying to say earlier but failed to:

"His greatest stre...more

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Nov 09, 2007 Elaine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: shortstorycollections

Colm Toibin's prose is so innocuous as to leave one unprepared for the understated emotional devastation in this landscape of mothers and sons. The stories that really shine in this collection are the ones of men adrift in the aftermath of a mother's death (The Three Friends) or disappearance (The Long Winter). In this immediate twilight, these sons are at a loss how to react and how to feel, and here's where the authenticity really slices through in wonderful ways, in this empty numbing space,...more

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Mar 12, 2009 Stephanie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Irish writer Colm Tolbin, whose last two novels were shortlisted for the 1999 and 2004 Booker Prizes, brings a distinctively novelistic touch to Mothers and Sons, his first short story collection.

That is, many of the stories read like chapters excerpted from various novels, rather than feeling complete in themselves. The stories do not conclude, but simply end -- not abruptly, but way before the conflict ripened during the course of the story is resolved.

The point, it seems, is not what happen...more Irish writer Colm Tolbin, whose last two novels were shortlisted for the 1999 and 2004 Booker Prizes, brings a distinctively novelistic touch to Mothers and Sons, his first short story collection.

That is, many of the stories read like chapters excerpted from various novels, rather than feeling complete in themselves. The stories do not conclude, but simply end -- not abruptly, but way before the conflict ripened during the course of the story is resolved.

The point, it seems, is not what happens next, but of the internal drama: the thought processes various characters have had to go through to reach that point. This can, at times, make for a frustrating read.

Yet, such withheld satisfacton is rather suitable for a collection that is all about characters withholding things from each other. These characters are, yes, mothers and their sons. Rather than the heartwarming tales or the Oedipus complexes that the title might suggest, Toibin writes about relationships that are strained or estranged.

In The Use of Reason, a Dublin master burglar who has stolen a Rembrandt finds his immunity from the police threatened by his alcoholic, loose-tongued mother. In A Priest in the Family, an old woman is the last to know that her ordained son has been accused of sexual abuse.

Toibin is careful not to judge his characters: by bringing the reader step-by-step through the character's inner turmoil, he manages to make even the most bizaare of actions somehow seem apt. In Three Friends, for example, a bereaved son goes straight from his mother's funeral to a hedonistic beach party, a story arc which at first light seems callous, but in Toibin's hands is transformed into something life-affirming.

However, giving away his novelistic roots, it is in Toibin's longer stories involving extended time frames in which he creates his most memorable characters. The Name of the Game is about a woman who stoops to conquer -- she opens a chip shop in the hope of raising enough money to earn her children a better life -- but discovers that her son, rather than studying, hopes to inherit the chip shop from her.

The last of the nine stories is a novella called A Long Winter, the only piece not set Ireland, but in a remote Spanish village during the 1960s. An alcoholic woman has her delivery of cheap wine confiscated by her husband. Devastated, she slips out of the house on foot in the direction of a nearby village, but a sudden blizzard leaves her survival very much in doubt.

As her son spends the ensuing winter searching the blanketed landscape hopelessly -- their only hope is that they find the body before the vultures get to it -- whatever latent, unexpressed sympathy the young man might have had for his mother's plight while she lived is reflected in his relationship with the orphaned teenager hired to take over housekeeping duties.

Toibin's refusal to conclude his stories conventionally seems like a cop-out in some instances; in others, however, it makes the reader feel the brunt of the protagonist's inner turmoil. His unrushed prose belies the intensity of emotions that drive each of the relationships depicted, and it is this understatement that makes some unresolved endings all the more poignant.

In A Summer Job, a mother observes the enigmatic relationship her youngest son develops with his infatuated grandmother -- part courtship, part grudging duty. "Have I not done enough?" the boy asks at the end, and his raw anguish is apparent even though what he has done remains to his mother, and the reader, a disquieting mystery. (less)

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Jan 04, 2009 Pris robichaud rated it 5 of 5 stars

This Is Not The Second Sunday InMay Stories, 21 Jan 2007

4.5 stars
"Sometimes they're more about the mothers, sometimes the sons, but most every story in Colm Tóibón's Irish-inflected collection is expertly woven with the threads of devotion, obligation, practical self-interest, and naked emotional need that can tether even the most distant of mothers and sons together. In his shorter tales, Tóibón can let those threads dangle awkwardly. It's only when he stretches out that Tóibón fully inhabit...more
This Is Not The Second Sunday InMay Stories, 21 Jan 2007

4.5 stars
"Sometimes they're more about the mothers, sometimes the sons, but most every story in Colm Tóibón's Irish-inflected collection is expertly woven with the threads of devotion, obligation, practical self-interest, and naked emotional need that can tether even the most distant of mothers and sons together. In his shorter tales, Tóibón can let those threads dangle awkwardly. It's only when he stretches out that Tóibón fully inhabits his characters in Story Collection, letting them breathe beyond the narrow roles prescribed by the title." Entertainment Weekly

Com Toibin has written a novel that tells stories of mothers and sons, but often one or the other are not present. This is not your usual set of stories that you would discuss on that certain second Sunday in May with your mother. Oh, no, this is the reality. There is love and comfort and caring, but there is also the mess life makes. Each character in each story has his own story to tell. The stories start in Colm Toibin's Dublin and they work their way to the coast and beyond. We feel the land and see it in mind's eye. Not one story is my favorite, the collection of them all tells the complete story of mothers and sons. The chapter headings tell us a story in itself. Nine stories and some I will mention:

'The Use of Reason'- a man who is a thief has his secrets given away by his drinking mom.

'A Song'- a mother and son who do not know each other but connect in a fashion through a song.

'The Name of the Game'- a mother left penniless after her husband['s death but she refuses to give in and leaves a legacy for her son.

'Famous Blue Raincoat'- a mother who was part of a singing group but is reluctant to tell her son the story.

'A Long Winter' a mother who drinks but will stop only in her own good time and the family who loves her but who can;pt seem to connect.

"The short story is a craftsman's form, and Toibin's craft is immaculate. Not many writers in Britain and Ireland are working at this level of intensity and seriousness, with not a slack sentence in 270 pages and nothing shoddy or easily sardonic throughout. The short story also seems an ideal form for a writer much more interested in emotion, and the slow exposing of a character, than in action or community." Pico Iyer

I picked up this book and expected something reassuring and warm, but it is part of Colm Toibin's vision to show us that mothers and sons are often not what they seem, and often have missed connections. In some way these are stories of people who are not there. There is love and devotion and hard work and jobs and anger. There is not much mentioned of the fathers, but you know they are there. These are very moving stories and will stay with me. A mother of a son, and I will take the wisdom from Colm Toibin. Highly Recommended. prisrob 1/20/07 (less)

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Nov 16, 2012 Justin Morgan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Toibin is one of those writers who I'm not crazy about but I keep returning to. This collection of short stories is very similar to his collection of novels in general in that I found a few emotionless (with purpose) and lacking energy, and several that were moving and have remained with me a month later. Technically, he's a great writer and I trust his intelligence, which causes me to examine more deeply those stories and novels that I don't find immediately satisfying. However, those stories t...more

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May 16, 2012 Ensiform rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, stories

A collection of short stories, each having to do with relationship between a mother and a son:

• “The Use of Reason” – a meditative criminal must warn his mother about talking too much
• “A Song” – a Dublin pub musician runs into his estranged mother, a successful musician, in a pub, and hears her sing
• “The Name of the Game” – a widow in Dublin determines to fix her finances by running a chip shop, and her son adapts to the life instantly, to her dismay
• “Famous Blue Raincoat” – a woman who recor...more A collection of short stories, each having to do with relationship between a mother and a son:

• “The Use of Reason” – a meditative criminal must warn his mother about talking too much
• “A Song” – a Dublin pub musician runs into his estranged mother, a successful musician, in a pub, and hears her sing
• “The Name of the Game” – a widow in Dublin determines to fix her finances by running a chip shop, and her son adapts to the life instantly, to her dismay
• “Famous Blue Raincoat” – a woman who recorded a couple of albums in her youth is reluctantly reminded of those not-so-happy days by her son’s interest
• “A Priest in the Family” – an elderly Irish woman comes to terms with her priest son’s molestation charges
• “A Journey” – a woman picks up her depressed, moody son so he can visit his dying father
• “Three Friends” – a man mourning his mother goes to a drug-filled gay rave on the beach
• “A Summer Job” – A woman’s own mother dotes on her grandson, who grows up to appear totally indifferent to either of them
• “A Long Winter” – in a remote village in Spain, a young man’s mother walks out into a snowstorm, and he and his father get on without her

Toibin is a fine writer, shortlisted for the Booker prize and celebrated for his novel The Master. Each of these stories is evocative and bleak, each one about alienation, removal, and loss. Toibin is either a gay man or writes predominately gay characters for whatever reason – I don’t see what this might have to do with the fact that none of these stories celebrates a maternal bond (save, perhaps, “Priest,” which is hardly a bright note) or anything approaching filial affection. I admire Toibin’s skill at the craft, I really do, but I remain mostly unmoved by these tales. I know it’s just me, a Philistine, but I’ve lost any interest in reading meticulously crafted, lifelike stories of distance and disaffection – if I ever did have much of an interest.
(less)

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Feb 01, 2011 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first three stories dragged for me and seemed sort of without point. The fourth story affected me but I can't be certain if it was the writing or certain uncomfortable similarities to my own life that caused that. Then, suddenly, all the other stories were great. "A Long Winter" is the volume's longest and most impressive entry. You almost drift when reading his best work. I enjoyed his novel, The Master, very much and so was surprised by how little I connected to this book when I started it...more

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Jan 13, 2010 Grady rated it 5 of 5 stars

Colm Tóibín: Master Storyteller

This review is from: Mothers and Sons: Stories (Hardcover)
One of our most intensely refined and challenging writers of the day, Colm Tóibín presents a new set of nine short stories correlated by the theme and title of mothers and sons, stories that mine the always fascinating relationship between mothers and sons, both positive and negative sides. This is writing of such apparent simplicity that the craftsmanship of his work is taken for granted - the mark of a tru...more Colm Tóibín: Master Storyteller

This review is from: Mothers and Sons: Stories (Hardcover)
One of our most intensely refined and challenging writers of the day, Colm Tóibín presents a new set of nine short stories correlated by the theme and title of mothers and sons, stories that mine the always fascinating relationship between mothers and sons, both positive and negative sides. This is writing of such apparent simplicity that the craftsmanship of his work is taken for granted - the mark of a truly fine writer. Here is a collection of stories to be read slowly, allowing time to digest each experience fully before moving on to the next.

'The Use of Reason' explores a son's theft of valuable art and the consequences of his actions result in a confrontation with his alcoholic mother that supercedes the criminal act. In the brief 'The Song' a young musician almost mistakenly hears his miscreant mother singing a ballad that should erase years of desertion just as in 'Famous Blue Raincoat' the son discovers songs his mother recorded with her hippie sister before disaster struck the drug-impacted band. In 'The Name of the Game' a mother attempts to recover the errors of her deceased husband in making a life for her son, unknowingly at odds with her son's true needs and goals. A mother faces the infamy of her priest son when his history of sexual abuse surfaces in 'A Priest in the Family', and in 'A Summer Job' the devotion of a son to his grandmother overshadows his relationship to his mother. In 'Three Friends' and 'A Long Winter' Tóibín delicately and with subtle sensitivity introduces same sex themes to embroider stories of strong and powerful tales. For this reader 'A Long Winter' (the longest of the stories) is so excellent it could be stretched into an entire novel!

Tóibín finds unique lines of communication among his characters, some with words, others with quiescent descriptors, and the flow of his use of the English language peppered with bits and pieces of both Irish culture and Spanish concepts (in 'The Long Winter') is lyrical, pungent and abundantly enriching to read. His mind is fertile and his style of writing is full of grace and feeling. Highly Recommended.

Grady Harp(less)

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Jan 22, 2009 Jackie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: irish-goodness-and-angst, short-stories

It is so hard to give stars to sort stories. The stories in Mothers & Sons fluctuate between two and a half and five stars, so this gets four, with no apologies for the lopsided-ness of the average.
At his best, Tóibín's stories are very, very good. My favorites were "Famous Blue Raincoat," "A Priest in the Family," and the completely fantastic "A Long Winter," which may be my favorite short story ever. (I'll have to review some of the others I've read and loved, though. Great. More to read!)...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

In his first short-fiction collection, Colm T_

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Apr 15, 2012 Louise rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-around-the-world-in-52-books, short-stories

Very bleak, the writing is good, but the book lacked a bit of genuine love and warmth.

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Oct 17, 2011 Revcmeyer rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm always looking for edifying stories of mothers and sons. This book's stories nodded to the complex relationship that exists but it did so in a very depressing Irish way. I still like to believe that mothers and sons can have truly adult, caring relationships but most books about mothers and sons are stuck in that forever fight for independence/suffocation. This is no exception. I would not call it edifying--interesting maybe. Some stories were definitely better than others--but you don't kno...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Lawrence rated it 2 of 5 stars

I thought this collection of stories was rather disappointing. With the exception of "The Name of the Game" --- which really was about a mother and a son --- the other stories seemed merely vignettes out of the lives of chance strangers. There was no development.

Even in "A Long Winter", the last and longest piece, I never got much of an idea why Miquel, the son of the peasant farmer, felt the way he did or was motivated as he was or was on the verge of breakdown as he was. The story had a littl...more

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May 18, 2012 Elijah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Mothers and Sons, a collection of short stories by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín, revolves around the theme, unsurprisingly, of the relationships between mothers and sons, each story focusing on a different family. There are three long stories, one about an art thief and his alcoholic mother, another about a financially struggling single mother and her attempts to restore the family business, and another about an alcoholic mother who gets lost in a snowstorm, as well as seven shorter ones. This c...more Mothers and Sons, a collection of short stories by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín, revolves around the theme, unsurprisingly, of the relationships between mothers and sons, each story focusing on a different family. There are three long stories, one about an art thief and his alcoholic mother, another about a financially struggling single mother and her attempts to restore the family business, and another about an alcoholic mother who gets lost in a snowstorm, as well as seven shorter ones. This collection is dark and intense, and relentless in its desolation, yet the intimate portraits of the characters and their relationships and Tóibín’s powerful writing make the reading rewarding and exciting.
One of Tóibín’s greatest strengths in this collection is his ability to write clearly and definitively while revealing so much without saying it explicitly. This is a constant theme in the writing of the book, as well as the relationships between characters. Most of the characters live in the world of modern Ireland, where families are close-knit and the neighbors and town can see much. Yet the tension in these stories grows out of what is not said and what is not done by these characters, but rather what is felt, what is implied, what is seen. And Tóibín’s writing pulls the reader in on those sensations. In “The Use of Reason”, the art thief is worried that his mother is going to blow his cover with her drinking, and though they barely interact throughout the story, much of his thinking and his actions relate to her. Tóibín communicates his feelings through clear and concise writing, not wasting any words, but it feels rich even in its bleakness, full of unspoken thoughts and depth. Toibin writes, “He wished he could do this [digging] all night so that his mother’s voice could be erased from his memory. It was not the voice on the tape that seemed to seep through the great guard he had placed around himself. It was an earlier voice, more shrill and more insistent, a voice that he had managed most of his life never to allow into his conscious day” (p. 33). Through such writing, there is a distinct sense of a surface layer of thought and action, yet Tóibín seems to imbue his words with so much more than that surface layer, engendering subconscious thought, deeper relationships, and more. The writing here, matches the tone of the setting and this character, in its meditative, lonely, and matter-of-fact way. And although it does not vary widely throughout the book even as the stories shift, it seems to take on and propel the characteristics of many of the characters and settings in the other stories.
Not only does Tóibín create tension, psychological drama, and subtext with his use absence of communication and action, he also employs absence of character to a similar effect. This is especially true in “The Name of the Game”, “A Long Winter” and “One Minus One”, the last story in the book. This story is written in a different tone and from a different perspective than the other stories, and though it fits thematically and tonally within the collection, it has a clear separation. Whereas all of the other stories are written from third person, “One Minus One” is written in first person, as a sort of letter or inner monologue, to another unnamed character. This character is never named, nor identified, and their relationship to the main character is ambiguous and only comes across in a few lines. The overall relationship between these two characters is built through the way the narrator speaks to them, and what is left unsaid and the absence of this character from any physical presence in this story pushes the reader’s interest and engagement with the subtle elements of the story. We feel this absence strongly in the loneliness of the narrator; the attempt at connection with this unknown “you” increases the earnestness and tragedy of this narrator’s feelings. One of the strongest lines in this story that creates this intense solitary quality and the wonderful flow between past and present through the address of you comes as the very end. Tóibín writes, “I understood, just as you might tell me now – if you picked up the phone and found me on the other end of the line, silent at first and then saying that I needed to talk to you – you might tell me that I had over all the years postponed too much” (p. 288). Through this line we are made clearly aware of the main character’s absence of action and communication; though he has this whole address to “you”, it is revealed that this goes unsaid, that he does not make the call. Tóibín also, through his impeccable and discerning choice of words, creates a sense of the relationship of these two characters even without stating much beyond the way they would speak. And even as the narrator is telling a story of another absence from the past – the loss of his mother – we are getting a sense of the narrator’s current state of mind.
One of the stories that stood out the most was “Three Friends”, perhaps because of a sense of the uncanny that existed within it and also its divergence from its focus on the family. This story begins with the funeral of Fergus’, the main character’s, mother and it very much has to do with his feelings about her and her death, but it takes a turn away from this theme directly with a story about a beach rave and homosexuality. The strange tone of this story seems to begin with the arrival of a stranger in the funeral home, who seems to have no bearing on the rest of the story. It is hard to tell what Tóibín was trying to do with this character, and he almost feels out-of-place, except that he creates a sense of disturbance in the story that sets a certain tone for the reader. Also, the way Tóibín writes about him is so beautifully constructed that he seems to be important, even fleetingly so. He writes, “Fergus glanced at him and saw in his dry skin and his pale face further evidence that these minutes did not belong to ordinary time, that the two of them had been dragged away by his mother’s spirit into a place of shadows” (p. 163). Not only does this give the reader a sense of Fergus’ thoughts and this stranger’s appearance, but it has a surreal quality that is projected through the rest of the story and turns the beach rave and sex into something more uncanny, spiritual, and emotionally charged.
The writing in this book only fell flat in a few places, where the relentlessness of the tragedy, isolation, and broken relationships got to be too much. This occurred especially in one of the shorter stories, “A Song” in which the melodramatic nature of the apparent tragic quality was fueled by the lack of depth of the character and the readers connection to him, as well a sense of the implausibility of the situation. In this story, Noel sees his mother, who he has not seen for a long time, singing at a pub and spends the story contemplating their relationship and the possibility of reconnecting with her, which he ends up not doing. The flat style here does not come across as a specific tone, but rather just as a lack of depth. Tóibín writes, “As he stood alone near the bar, Noel calculated that, as he was twenty-eight, this meant he had not seen his mother for nineteen years. He had not even known she was in Ireland and, as he looked around carefully, he did not think that he would recognize her” (p. 43). There is an artificiality to this world, and the reader does not feel compelled to relate to Noel and his inner tension because it feels forced, calculated, and empty. Whereas in the other stories, the narrative provides a basis for the complex characters, powerful prose and engaging tone, here it supplants all that and the story becomes overdramatic. Perhaps this is what compelled Tóibín to keep the story so short; he was driven by an idea and wanted to see it played out, but only as a brief experiment.
Overall, this was a powerfully written collection that was cohesive and engaging throughout. Tóibín made remarkable use of language in his concise, full sentences and his austere, solitary tone. Tóibín has been compared to James Joyce, especially with this work and Dubliners, and it seems that Tóibín deserves this praise, not just as a quality Irish writer and a master of understatement and choice words, but with his overall powerful storytelling and use of language. (less)

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Jan 09, 2008 Tung rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

I try to read 2-3 short story collections a year (after getting addicted to Raymond Carver stories in college). Mothers and Sons is the best collection of short stories I’ve read in the last four years. The title gives you the common thread that binds all of these stories together – the relationships between mothers and sons, good and bad. These relationships aren’t always the central plot of the stories, however, with some relationships only serving as relevant factors in what’s occurring. Toib...more

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Mar 14, 2009 Sarah Payok rated it 5 of 5 stars

Colm Toibin has been one of my favorite authors since I read the first few pages of South several years ago. He has an ability to express such a degree of emotion through his words that it is impossible for me to not feel viscerally every word he writes. I was curious as to how this would carry over to Mothers and Sons, which is a collection of short stories and novellas.

The novellas were more successful for me than the short stories. I often wished the short stories contained more - more detail...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Joan rated it 1 of 5 stars

I did not much like this collection of short stories by the Irish author. He writes well, but his window to the world is oppressively murky. Each story is a snapshot of people in some kind of dark predicament. There is, as the title implies, a common theme of a mother/son relationship. In every story, this relationship is estranged, destructive, depressing. And the stories leave the reader there, in that forsaken terrain. One hopes for a ray of light to illuminate a way out, but it never comes.

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Dec 08, 2011 Rosemary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Quite a collection of dark stories,all about relationships between mothers and sons, most in Ireland but also Spain. Coincidence that both countries had violent civil wars of terror? These are not love filled relationships, but darker, with strong independence and self reliance as themes for both the moms and sons. Drugs, alcohol, violence, crime and sex, too; the lives of regular people and how they survive despite each other. Sounds dismal, but I actually loved it.

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Jul 31, 2011 James Haliburton added it

Beautiful book. The simplicity of Toibin's writing belies the emotional depth of each of these short stories; fragments of lives - in Ireland and Spain - are captured through simplicity and emotional insights. There is a bleakness to the characters' situations that never becomes maudlin but rather captures the psychological complexity of relationships facing the unexpected strains and trials that mean the individual lives can and will never be the same again.

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Aug 06, 2011 Jordan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Is there a more patient contemporary writer than Toibin? These are some of the subtlest stories around. If they possess a flaw, it's that they're so subtle, and so attuned to tiny shifts in their characters' consciousness, they lack sufficient action. They risk being boring. Toibin could care less about dazzling. His stories plumb interior lives, sometimes at the expense of the external world.

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Dec 23, 2007 C(h)ristine rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love making new discoveries–wow, what a writer. Each of the stories in this collection revolve around the relationship of a mother and son, sometimes at its most heartbreaking moment. Toibin (again, with the accent marks of the “i’s” missing because I can’t figure out how to put them in on this keyboard) was recommended to me by a writing mentor of mine…and then just two weeks later, I found out he is a friend of a friend. I can’t help but think that fate, yet again, brought me to his work.

The...more

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Sep 09, 2009 Larry rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am a big fan of Colm and these are the first short stories by him that I have read. Overall I was disapointed and greatly missed the magic of Toibin's novel writing.I felt short-changed in a few of them, really enjoyed "A Song" and "The Name of the Game" (could have made a great novel!) and a few ("The Use of Reason" and "Three Friends") I didn't enjoy at all.

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Apr 03, 2011 Rozanne rated it 2 of 5 stars

What's the big deal about this guy? I didn't find any of the stories exceptional, and I found some of the characters tedious and/or loathsome and the plots uninteresting and pointless. I'm also not a fan of the "I can't figure out how to end this story, so I'll just stop writing" technique. To me that demonstrates a serious lack of storytelling technique and craftsmanship.

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Apr 16, 2010 Hillary rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club, short-stories

I'm too tired to sit through adequately written short stories. they'll just push me over the edge into full-fledged sleep mode. so i had to stop. they would be a serviceable collection under other circumstances, but there wasn't enough about the few (alright, two) stories i read to keep me going. i'm beginning to think adequate isn't such a complimentary word.

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Dec 21, 2011 Clodagh added it

lives lived in quiet desperation. a million miles from ms. allende, i felt like i know a lot of the people in these short stories. a really interesting and diverse exploration of the relationships between mothers and sons. i was surprised at how accurate colm's description of being at a seaside rave was. gwan colm ya mad yoke ooowha! ooowha!

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Jul 29, 2011 Laura Macdonald added it

This is a brilliant, though uncomfortable read. It's a book of short stories of the relationships between mothers and their sons, all of them tinged with suspicion, awkwardness and pain. Broken lives abound in this book. It is dark, so very very dark and the writer is spare with his words, but overflowing with expression.

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Nov 15, 2010 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Well, I usually love short stories, but these just didn't click with me. There were two poignant stories out of about eight. The rest didn't seem to really have endings, which I know is usually considered artistic, but some of them it just felt like the author was either scared of bringing things to a resolution, or he just got bored and moved on to the next story.

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Dec 08, 2012 Paul D. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

With much said in just a few sentences, reading Colm Toibin's works always gives me a profound sense of satisfaction. This collection of finely wrought short stories, in which Toibin dissects the relationships between mothers and their sons, is no exception ... a series of nice thoughtful reads.

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Oct 19, 2012 Marco rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: english, fiction

A collection of short stories, each of them is an in-depth investigations of the human interactions between mothers and sons. The focus is on their feelings, fears, and desires. As in Blackwater Lightship, the author demonstrates an astounding sensibility and understanding of human nature.

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Oct 30, 2011 yb rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Disappointing, considering how much I enjoyed The Blackwater Lightship and the strong emotional reaction I had the first time I read "One Minus One." The stories cover a range of mother/son relationships and various scenarios, and they all ring true. Still, they largely failed to move me.

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About Colm Tóibín

(From the authors website - http://www.colmtoibin.com/content/bio... )
"Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. Out of his experience in Barcelona be produced two books, the novel ‘The South’ (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and winner of the Irish Times/ Aer Lingus First Fiction...more (From the authors website - http://www.colmtoibin.com/content/bio... )
"Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. Out of his experience in Barcelona be produced two books, the novel ‘The South’ (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and winner of the Irish Times/ Aer Lingus First Fiction Award) and ‘Homage to Barcelona’, both published in 1990. When he returned to Ireland in 1978 he worked as a journalist for ‘In Dublin’, ‘Hibernia’ and ‘The Sunday Tribune’, becoming features editor of ‘In Dublin’ in 1981 and editor of Magill, Ireland’s current affairs magazine, in 1982. He left Magill in 1985 and travelled in Africa and South America. His journalism from the 1980s was collected in ‘The Trial of the Generals’ (1990). His other work as a journalist and travel writer includes ‘Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border’ (1987) and ‘The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe’ (1994). His other novels are: ‘The Heather Blazing (1992, winner of the Encore Award); ‘The Story of the Night’ (1996, winner of the Ferro-Grumley Prize); ‘The Blackwater Lightship’ (1999, shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Prize and the Booker Prize and made into a film starring Angela Lansbury); ‘The Master’ (2004, winner of the Dublin IMPAC Prize; the Prix du Meilleur Livre; the LA Times Novel of the Year; and shortlisted for the Booker Prize); ‘Brooklyn’ (2009, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year). His short story collections are ‘Mothers and Sons’ (2006, winner of the Edge Hill Prize) and ‘The Empty Family (2010). His play ‘Beauty in a Broken Place’ was performed at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin in 2004. His other books include: ‘The Modern Library: the 200 Best Novels Since 1950’ (with Carmen Callil); ‘Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush’ (2002); ‘Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar’ (2002) and ‘All a Novelist Needs: Essays on Henry James’ (2010). He has edited ‘The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction’. His work has been translated into thirty languages. In 2008, a book of essays on his work ‘Reading Colm Toibin’, edited by Paul Delaney, was published. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Ulster and from University College Dublin. He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. In 2006 he was appointed to the Arts Council in Ireland. He has twice been Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University and also been a visiting writer at the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University.

Colm Toibin’s collection of stories ‘The Empty Family’ will be published in the UK in October 2010 and in the US and Canada in January 2011. His collection of essays on Henry James, ‘All a Novelist Needs’ will be published in November 2010."(less)

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