The Empty Family: Stories
Colm Toibin
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 143919596X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
On the heels of his bestselling and award-winning novel Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín returns with a stunning collection of stories—now available in paperback—“a book that’s both a perfect introduction to Tóibín and, for longtime fans, a bracing pleasure” ( The Seattle Times ).
Critics praised Brooklyn as a “beautifully rendered portrait of Brooklyn and provincial Ireland in the 1950s.” In The Empty Family, Tóibín has extended his imagination further, offering an incredible range of periods and characters—people linked by love, loneliness, desire—“the unvarying dilemmas of the human heart” ( The Observer, UK).
In the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a relationship between Pakistani workers in Barcelona—a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence. In “Two Women,” an eminent and taciturn Irish set designer takes a job in her homeland and must confront emotions she has long repressed. “Silence” is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party.
Reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, The Empty Family will further cement Tóibín’s status as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” ( Los Angeles Times ).
director on his own and was absolutely clear about what she had in mind, then he would not be opposed to what she would suggest. She had not dreamed in the night and had woken fresh, ready for work, so it was only now in the car as a drizzle settled over south Dublin and the strong coffee she had taken over breakfast started to kick in that the scene in the National Gallery came into her thoughts again. She had been with Luke for twelve years, but she had never lived with him. They had mostly
into the pool. It was still only ten o’clock in the morning. She wondered how she would spend the day. Despite her mother’s invitation, she did not change into the bathing suit Nuria had found for her and join them in the pool. Instead, she walked around to the front of the house, noticing that the path down to the beach had been blocked off by a new wall. She walked down the drive and along the narrow dusty road until she came to the first group of bungalows, the ones that did not have a view of
the floor all around him. The heaving made him almost cry out because of his ribs and made him see black spots. He managed to stand by leaning on his left leg and using his left arm to lever himself up. Propped against the wall, he stood there on one foot trying not to breathe in too deeply. And slowly he hobbled across to the light and turned it off and then sat down. Across the room Abdul was whimpering and then gasping for breath and whimpering again. He had time now to think, to weigh what
say to Baldy or to his father on the phone, angry things, or demands, but in the mornings he knew that he would never say anything to either of them. Baldy brought him soap and shampoo and he kept himself as clean as he could. Sometimes, his arm and his leg grew itchy under the plaster and he tried to think about Abdul and this made him excited but soon he had to be careful because after the excitement he grew depressed and angry again and felt like banging his fists or even his head against the
Abdul’s coming here was Baldy, and Malik knew that this was the last thing Baldy would want to do. He touched the suitcase for a moment and then edged it open. He knew from the clothes at the top that it was definitely Abdul’s. Abdul would be finishing work within an hour. He began to boil the rice and fry some lamb he had bought. It was a warm night and he had opened the door on to the rooftop. As the food cooked he walked into the main room as though he were Abdul. He turned off the main light