Colm Tóibín Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Colm Tóibín

“I had written four chapters and i was diagnosed with cancer," explains the author about his writing pause during chemotherapy. "I did think a great deal about the book. I wonder if I got a depth that I otherwise would not have got if I didn’t have those fallow six months.”

Colm Tóibín

The book can talk as much as it can hear and see. It doesn’t just have pages; it has a soul. It loves life and hates suffering. But more than anything, the book (and the novelist) knows how to tell a story that is witty and engaging.

Colm Tóibín

Surrender is ... introspective, raw, self-deprecating, oddly earnest, almost self-accusing. What is strange, and what makes much of this book so exciting and interesting, is that the sadness is overwhelmed by a desperate, frenzied desire to use life more richly ...

Colm Tóibín

The power of the story comes from Mann confronting his own reticence, writing fiction whose frankness belonged to the world of his elder children as they did what they pleased in the chaotic Germany of the early 1920s. In this story, he became their contemporary.

Colm Tóibín

A searing and fascinating new novel about motherhood...With its honesty, evocative detail, and larger questions about sexism and society, this book is likely to become a classic of its kind, regardless of the country.