The Heather Blazing

Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476704473
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Colm Tóibín’s “lovely, understated” novel that “proceeds with stately grace” (The Washington Post Book World) about an uncompromising judge whose principles, when brought home to his own family, are tragic. Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships—with his father, his first “girl,” his wife, and the children who barely know him—and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power, “seductive and absorbing” (USA Today).

Red Comet

Author: Heather Clark
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307961168
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1185

Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art. “One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her troubles with an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes; and much more. Clark’s clear-eyed portraits of Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath’s suicide promote a deeper understanding of her final days. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark’s meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous To Know

Author: Mary Jo Putney
Publisher: Pandamax Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 89

Book Description
He was going to be hanged on Tuesday English-born Andrew Kane had enjoyed the adventurous life of a gambler in the Wild West, but after winning a ranch in Colorado, he was ready to settle down. Then his attempt to protect a young tavern girl led to a shoot out and a wrongful conviction for murder. On his journey to the gallows, he meets despairing young widow Eliza Holden who intervenes when he's being beaten by his guards. Together, they find comfort and a stunning sense of connection. Can Eliza create a Christmas miracle for them both? Praise from readers: "The main characters have personal struggles which they approach with grit and honor. Of course the love and peace of the Christmas season helps them resolve and love. I really liked the story set in the West especially because there are so few good stories set there." "This was a really unique and memorable romance and much different than anything I've read from MJP before. It contains some serious subject matter...just be aware that it's not a light and easy read."

The Blackwater Lightship

Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501106929
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
From the author of The Master and Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín weaves together the lives of three generations of estranged women as they reunite to witness and mourn the death of a brother, a son, and a grandson. It is Ireland in the early 1990s. Helen, her mother, Lily, and her grandmother, Dora, have come together to tend to Helen's brother, Declan, who is dying of AIDS. With Declan's two friends, the six of them are forced to plumb the shoals of their own histories and to come to terms with each other. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Blackwater Lightship is a deeply resonant story about three generations of an estranged family reuniting to mourn an untimely death. In spare, luminous prose, Colm Tóibín explores the nature of love and the complex emotions inside a family at war with itself. Hailed as "a genuine work of art" (Chicago Tribune), this is a novel about the capacity of stories to heal the deepest wounds.

The Blazing World and Other Writings

Author: Margaret Cavendish
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141904828
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.

The South

Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147670449X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
A highly acclaimed novel from the author of Brooklyn and an “immensely gifted and accomplished writer” (The Washington Post), about an Irishwoman who creates a new life in post-war Spain. In 1950, Katherine Proctor leaves Ireland for Barcelona, determined to escape her family and become a painter. There she meets Miguel, an anarchist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and begins to build a life with him. But Katherine cannot escape her past, as Michael Graves, a fellow Irish émigré in Spain, forces her to reexamine all her relationships: to her lover, her art, and the homeland she only thought she knew. The South is a novel of classic themes—of art and exile, and of the seemingly irreconcilable yearnings for love and freedom—to which Colm Tóibín brings a new, passionate sensitivity.

Brooklyn

Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771085400
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Winner of the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's internationally bestselling novel is a story of devastating emotional power. At the centre of Colm Tóibín's internationally celebrated novel is Eilis Lacey, one among many of her generation who has come of age in 1950s Ireland but cannot find work at home. When she receives a job offer in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving her family and country behind, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, however, the pain of parting and a longing for home are buried beneath the rhythms of her new life—until she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, tragic news summons her back to Ireland, where she unexpectedly finds herself facing an impossible decision.

Mothers and Sons

Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416539182
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
With dazzling brilliance and empathy, Colm Tóibín's collection of stories wrestles with complicated themes of emotional restraint, the long reach of sexual repression, and the difficulty of escaping one's past. 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. Many are trapped in lives they would not choose again, if they ever chose at all. A man buries his mother and converts his grief to desire in one night. A famous singer captivates an audience, yet cannot beguile her own estranged son. And in "A Long Winter," Colm Tóibín's finest piece to date, a young man searches for his mother in the snow-covered mountains where she has sought escape from the husband who controls and confines her. Winner of numerous awards for his fifth novel, The Master—including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award—Tóibín brings to this stunning first collection an acute understanding of human frailty and longing. These are haunting, profoundly moving stories by a writer who is himself a master.

The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction

Author: Colm Tóibín
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780140298499
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This volume presents the entire canon of Irish fiction in English, from Jonathan Swift (born 1667) to Emma Donoghue (born 1969). Selections from 100 renowned writers, including Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and others, are presented along with background information.

The Story of the Night

Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: Emblem Editions
ISBN: 0771085656
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The streets of Buenos Aires are empty at night, and people notice nothing because they have trained themselves not to see. This is Argentina in the time of the generals. Richard Garay lives alone with his mother, hiding his homosexuality from her and from the world. Stifled by a job he despises, he finds himself willing to take chances, both sexual and professional. But in the aftermath of the Falklands War, new freedoms seem possible, and the arrival of two American diplomats offer him hope and the prospect of making his fortune. As his country slowly makes its peace with the outside world, Richard tentatively begins a love affair—but the Faustian bargain he has made with experience gradually darkens. The Story of the Night is a powerful and moving mix of politics, passion, and intrigue that confirms Tóibín as one of the finest writers of his generation.