Colm Tóibín
Author of Brooklyn
About the Author
Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, Ireland in 1955. He studied history and English at University College Dublin, earning his B.A. in 1975. After graduating he moved to Barcelona for three years and taught at the Dublin School of English. In 1978 he returned to Dublin and began working on an show more M.A. in Modern English and American Literature. He wrote for In Dublin, Hibernia, and The Sunday Tribune. He became the Features Editor of In Dublin in 1981, and then a year later accepted the position of Editor for the Irish current affairs magazine Magill. His first book, Walking Along the Border, was published in 1987 and his first novel, The South, was published in 1990. He wrote for The Sunday Independent as a drama or television critic and political commentator. He writes regularly for The London Review of Books. He has written several other novels including The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary, and Nora Webster. The Heather Blazing received the 1993 Encore Award and The Master received the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. In 2015 he made The New Zealand High Profile Titles List with All The Light We Cannot See. He was short listed for the 2015 Folio Prize for his title Nora Webster. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photo by Larry D. Moore, 2006 (Wikimedia Commons)
Series
Works by Colm Tóibín
One Hundred Years of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (Penn State Series in the History of the Book) (2022) 13 copies
Donal Webster - short story 1 copy
Mortifications [short story] 1 copy
The Street [short story] 1 copy
21 [short story] 1 copy
The Master/ The Blackwater Lightship / The Heather Blazing / Brooklyn / The South / The Story of the Night (2010) — Author — 1 copy
What Catalans Want 1 copy
What Would Lynne Tillman Do? 1 copy
Uncorrected Excerpts 2009 1 copy
Sleep 1 copy
Blue: a personal selection 1 copy
Associated Works
Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out… (2000) — Contributor — 302 copies
Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100 (2011) — Contributor — 118 copies
Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives (2009) — Contributor — 22 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1955-05-30
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Ireland
- Birthplace
- Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland
- Places of residence
- Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland
Dublin, Ireland
Barcelona, Spain - Education
- Christian Brothers School, Enniscorthy
St. Peter's College, Wexford
University College Dublin (BA, 1975) - Occupations
- magazine editor
journalist
novelist
critic
commentator - Organizations
- Royal Society of Literature (2007)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Honorary member, 2014) - Awards and honors
- E. M. Forster Award (1995)
Fellow, Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library
Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2004)
Costa Novel Award (2009)
Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement (2017)
Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award (2017) (show all 7)
Bodley Medal (2023) - Short biography
- Irish writer Colm Tóibín, born in 1955, worked as a journalist before achieving fame as a fiction writer. His works often depict Irish society and explore themes of creativity and homosexuality.
Members
Discussions
Group Read, July 2020: The Master in 1001 Books to read before you die (October 2020)
Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award in The Prizes (September 2017)
2013 Booker longlist: The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín in Booker Prize (March 2014)
Reviews
Lists
Irish writers (6)
Unmarried women (1)
Five star books (1)
Audio Books (1)
Unread books (1)
2000s decade (1)
Europe (1)
Tour of Ireland (2)
to get (1)
Booker Prize (4)
Short and Sweet (1)
A Novel Cure (1)
2015 UpROOTed (1)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 73
- Also by
- 41
- Members
- 20,523
- Popularity
- #1,056
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 856
- ISBNs
- 605
- Languages
- 22
- Favorited
- 65
Eilis is Irish, the entire rest of the family who all live close is Italian. Eilis says she doesn't want the baby in the house, so Tony decides his mother living next door will raise it - really?
Eilis goes back to Ireland to her 80 year old mother who knows nothing about all this; her children, Rosetta and Larry come after. Here she sees her old friend Nancy who is secretly having an affair with Eilis's old boyfriend Jim. There are weddings, pub scenes, neighborly gossip, etc. but none of it seems particularly believable - they all seems without much emotion. "What the neighbors will say" rules everything so no one talks about anything real.
The ending left me pretty confused.… (more)