The Heather Blazing (Picador Thirty) - Softcover

Colm Tóibín

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330493736 ISBN 13: 9780330493734

Publisher: Picador, 2002

Synopsis

Colm Toibin is a master storyteller, renowned for his keen, spare style and the understated emotional charge of his novels. Eamon Redmond, a High Court judge in his sixties, is now nearing retirement. But where you would expect him to look back contentedly over a lifetime of achievement, Redmond is forced, unwillingly, into an examination of his past. Land and sea, past and present, country and city, youth and age: Toibin employs the juxtapositions of life with effortless power, conjuring an authentic and deeply moving story out of the shadows of a man's memory.

About this title

About the Author:

Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland and lives in Dublin. He is one of Ireland's best known journalists. He is the author of The South, winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Prize. In 1995, he was awarded the Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Prize. He is also the author of The Heather Blazing and The Story of the Night.

From Publishers Weekly:

Irish novelist Toibin here follows up his Irish Times /Aer Lingus Irish Literature Award-winning first book, The South , with another extended study in paralysis--not the physical kind, but rather the willed emotional stasis that James Joyce, in a famous formulation, contended gripped the Irish soul. The hero here is Eamon Redmond, a High Court judge in Dublin who is readying for retirement. He and his wife, Carmel, are thinking of moving permanently to the south coast, near Enniscorthy, a place filled with childhood memories for them both. As they contemplate the joys of their autumn years, strains in their relations emerge: their unwed daughter announces she is pregnant; Eamon writes an unpopular opinion in a civil rights case; and Carmine accuses Eamon of always having been distant ("You sound bored. It is one of the things that you have learned to do over the years"). Toibin's acclaimed prose style--measured and restrained as a Victorian memoir yet poetic in precision--makes a character of the brooding, enigmatic Irish weather and gives voice to the darker side of the Irish character. As in Joyce's stories in Dubliners , the proceedings lead to an epiphany of sorts, as Eamon finds himself doting on his grandson at the shore. A small advance in the moral education of Eamon Redmond, yes; but under Toibin's generous, forgiving gaze, the moment rings profound.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0330493736
• ISBN 13: 9780330493734
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256