The Content Reader

Having read Colm Tóibín's The Master, a historical fiction on the life of Henry James, I was eagerly anticipating his piece on Thomas Mann. In general, Tóibín always delivers, so this time as well. In 2020 I read Tilmann Lahme's biography Die Manns   (my review under link) about this fascinating family. I don't know whether it is good or not to have read a biography before a historical fiction. For me, when I read a historical fiction on any subject, I like to read a nonfiction about it, so for me it was good. I don't think it is necessary in general. However, it did confirm to me that Tóbín, as expected, knows what he is writing about.  When you read about the Mann family a famous quote by Leo Tolstoj comes to mind; "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The Manns are certainly an unhappy family, and probably unhappy in its own way. Affected by the dominance of Thomas Mann, the great writer. He is not dominant in any v...

There has not been that many reviews here lately, although I have read quite a lot. Well, time is the culprit. Here are a few short notes on some of the books I have read in June. Three books by Colm Tóibín;   The Empty Family, Brooklyn and The Heather Blazing. All about family relationships, or the difficulty with such relationships. The first one contains short stories of different kind of family relationships. Often we might think of family as mom, dad and children, but Tóibín finds so many more kinds, and they are not always happy ones. The other two books also deals with family. In Brooklyn, Eilis Lancey, moves to New York when she cannot find work in 1950s Ireland. All alone in a new country, totally different from her old world, we see how she changes in trying to find a happy life for herself. It is very sensitively written and shows clearly how people change/develop coming to a new place, and how it also changes the relationship with the people left behind. The ...

"I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that." A sample of the wonderful writings of Tóibín. The Empty Family, is a short story collection on the family theme, which is a theme he mostly uses. Colm Tóibín seems to have so many different versions of what a family is. Here we find a unique set of characters and their various family relationships. So diverse, so different and so touching. Family relations are, as we know, not always the easiest kind of relationships. Tóibín manages to takes us along the various routes that can be called family ties and it is fascinating. His language is poetic and it is like you are on a river in a small boat that carries you with a slow current. The stories cover love between man and woman and man and man. Not only the feeling ...