Full name: Mothers and Sons: Stories

Author: Colm Toibin Year: 2006 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Short Stories, Fiction, Award winners Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781416534655 9781416534662 1416534652 1416534660

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, Toibin 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 Toibin's finest piece of fiction 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, iThe Master/i -- including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award -- Toibin 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. Similar books: Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor Fishing the Sloe-Black River by Colum McCann A Bit on the Side by William Trevor The Empty Family by Colm Toibin Bullfighting by Roddy Doyle Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan The Collected Stories by William Trevor Night in Tunisia by Neil Jordan The Collected Stories by John McGahern The Deportees by Roddy Doyle Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel by Dermot Bolger The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright A Fanatic Heart by Edna O'Brien Because They Wanted to by Mary Gaitskill The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie Birds of America by Lorrie Moore Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez