The Heather Blazing - Softcover

Toibin, Colm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140175326 ISBN 13: 9780140175325

Publisher: Penguin Group USA, 1994

Synopsis

The sea is slowly eating into the land and the hill with the old watchtower has completely disappeared. The nearest house has crumbled and fallen into the sea. It is Ireland in the late twentieth century.

Eamon Redmond is a judge in the Irish High Court. Obsessed all his life by the letter and spirit of the law, he is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Toibin reconstructs the history of Eamon's relationships—with his father, his first "girl," his wife, and the children who barely know him. He gives us a family as minutely realized as any of John McGahern's, and he writes about Eamon's affection for the landscape of his childhood on the east coast of Ireland with such skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel that ensnares us with its emotional intensity and dazzles with its crystalline prose. In The Heather Blazing, Colm Toibin displays once again the gifts that illuminated The South, a book described by Don DeLillo as "a grand achievement," and by John Banville as "a daring imaginative feat...a splendid first novel."

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.

Reviews

Irish novelist Toibin offers a profound study of the emotional paralysis which grips a Dublin High Court Judge and his family.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Group USA
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140175326
• ISBN 13: 9780140175325
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256