The South - Softcover

Toibin, Colm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852421703 ISBN 13: 9781852421700

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 1990

Synopsis

'Night is coming down and there is a hum of noise from the street. I have been here for several weeks. I am grateful that the fat woman who runs this hotel and her little mouse of a husband do not speak English. I remain a mystery to them; they cannot get through to me. The man in the next room - as far as I can understand a word he says - goes to the opera every night and listens to opera on his radio all the time.' The South begins with Katherine Proctor's arrival in Barcelona in 1950. Drawn by her longing to be an artist, she has left her family behind in Ireland. In Spain, she meets Miguel, an anarchist veteran of the Civil War and together they embark on a new life. The past catches up with them. and Katherine is forced to question her relationship to her lover, to her painting, and to the other man she meets in Spain, Michael Graves, through whom she discovers an Ireland she never knew. In a prose that is both lyrical and direct, Colm T?ib?n convinces his readers that Katherine will reconcile her freedom and her need to paint. To classical themes, he brings a new, passionate sensitivity.

About this title

About the Author

Colm T ib n was born in Cork in Ireland in 1955 and now lives in Dublin. He is the author of Walking Along the Border and Homage to Barcelona. The South is his first work of fiction.

From Kirkus Reviews

A married Irishwoman leaves her family and finds fulfillment with a painter in Spain: no fireworks in this muted first novel from Irish journalist Toibin, though he does avoid rebirth-in-the- sun clich‚s. The year is 1950. What causes 32-year-old Katherine Proctor to bolt from husband Tom, son Richard, and their southern Irish farm is Tom's dragging their poor neighbors into court when they infringe on his land; it's her land too, and Tom's arrogance gives the deathblow to a loveless marriage. In London, Katherine gets encouragement from her mother (who had left her husband during the Troubles of 1920) and moves on to Barcelona (where her mother's checks will sustain her). Through the common interest of painting, she soon meets Michael Graves, a working-class man from her hometown who will become a supportive friend, and Miguel, who will become her lover. Miguel sells enough paintings for the two to move to the Pyrenees, to a village that feels like ``the quiet top of the world.'' An anarchist fighter against Franco, Miguel had retreated here during the Civil War; slowly Katherine realizes that neither their ``ravenous'' love nor the birth of a daughter, Isona, will heal the wounds of a war that for Miguel still continues. Ominously, he starts to see Katherine as the class enemy; after police harassment and the death of his ``leader,'' Carlos Puig, he goes to pieces, killing Isona and himself. The book's final third skims the years rapidly, as Katherine returns to Ireland, makes peace with her grown son Richard and his wife (Tom has died), and devotes herself to her painting. Toibin's spare prose (not mannered or fake Hemingway) and partial glimpses into Katherine's consciousness and background (Protestant gentry) work well enough at first, but as the years pile up, so do the questions; eventually, Toibin's withholding technique looks like a simple inability to deliver. Still, a promising debut. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1852421703
• ISBN 13: 9781852421700
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256