The Story of the Night: A Novel - Softcover

Colm Tóibín

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805058257 ISBN 13: 9780805058253

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book

The streets are empty at night, and people see nothing because they have trained themselves not to. It is Argentina in a time of the generals. Richard Garay lives alone with his mother, hiding his sexuality from her and from the world. Stifled by a job he despises, he is willing to take chances, both sexual and professional. The Falklands War enables him to disregard the Britishness he has inherited from his mother, and the arrival of two American diplomats offer him new hope and the prospect of making his fortune. Argentina is changing, and as his country slowly makes its peace with the outside world, Richard tentatively begins a love affair--but the Faustian bargain he has made with experience is gradually becoming a nightmare. Richard tells his picaresque story with a mixture of confessional guilt and awestruck wonder. The Story of the Night is a powerful, brave, and moving novel.

About this title

Review:

In the past decade Colm Tóibín has garnered international fame for his fiction, reporting, and travel writing. Now, in his new novel, The Story of Night, he breaks new emotional ground with the story of a gay man coming of age in Argentina during the Falklands War. Tóibín weds his two themes--the ongoing Argentinean struggle toward democracy and the personal journey of a man coming out--with intellectual deftness and literary agility. Written with grace and understatement The Story of Night is Tóibín's best work yet.

From the Back Cover:

“A beautiful, fascinating novel. It is a thriller, a love story, and much more. Colm Tóibín is an extraordinary writer, daring and precise.”
–Roddy Doyle

“A mesmerizing, dark, powerful novel....”
–The Times (U.K.)

“Tóibín is a fine writer. This novel pulls you in gradually and keeps you guessing....”
–Edmonton Journal

“Tóibín’s genius is that he makes it impossible for us to walk away.”
–The New Yorker

“A love story and a political thriller and about being Irish and a coming-out novel.”
–Esquire

“A novel that reads like the most memorable of Camus....The story – told in restrained, spare, matter-of-fact prose – becomes more immediate and powerful as we are drawn in....The anger you feel as you read the final pages will remain long after you have closed the book.”
–Globe and Mail

“Written in a self-reflective style that rings with honesty, bravely constructing a complex metaphor of sex and death in Argentina.”
–New York Times

“This troubling and haunting book is one of shadows and secrets, half-lives and losses, endings and fears.”
–Observer (U.K.)

“The intellect which has so conspicuously powered Tóibín’s writing career is fired here with a new ambition and purpose.”
–Independent (U.K.)

“A fine novel, remarkable for the purity of its ambitions.”
–Washington Post Book World

“A love story of the most serious and difficult kind. [Tóibín] has told it with profound artistry and truth.”
–Tobias Wolff

“Generates the tension of an unstoppable flow....Haunting....The Story of the Night is tautly constructed, politically hip, and geographically true.”
–Pier

About this edition

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0805058257
• ISBN 13: 9780805058253
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304