Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of nine novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster and, most recently, House of Names. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, won the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. He lives in Dublin.
Part of Toibin's success comes down to the power of his writing: an
almost unfaultable combination of artful restraint and wonderfully
observed detail . . . Unforgettable
*New York Times*
A giant amongst storytellers, Toibin has thrown down the gauntlet
with his latest novel . . . And it is a masterpiece
*Daily Telegraph*
A gorgeous stylist, Tóibín captures the subtle flutterings of
consciousness better than any writer alive . . . Never before has
Tóibín demonstrated such range, not just in tone but in action. He
creates the arresting, hushed scenes for which he's so well known
just as effectively as he whips up murders that compete, pint for
spilled pint, with those immortal Greek playwrights
*Washington Post*
Brilliant retelling of a Greek Tragedy... This is a novel that is a
celebration of what novels can do.
*Observer*
Considerable Game of Thrones appeal...instead of cheap narrative
tricks and resolutions we're left with images of desolation and
thwarted love
*Financial Times*
A devastatingly human story...savage, sordid and hauntingly
believable
*Guardian*
The book has a controlled hushed quality, like that of a Morandi
still life, which only serves to heighten the terror and pity of
the tale
*John Banville*
Colm Tóibín turns Greek Myths into flesh and blood..The writing is
characteristically elegant, spare and subtle. ..The scenes between
Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus darkly sexy
*The Times*
An extraordinarily sympathetic and intimate portrait
*Literary Review*
In Toibin's careful hands, the story of Clytemnestra, who avenges
her daughter after her husband Agamemnon sacrifices her to secure
safe passage from Troy, is told with such a vivid grasp of the
emotional pulse that even those who know the story well will be
transfixed.
*Daily Mail*
What is truly miraculous, though, is how Tóibín has made us
sympathize with people who do terrible, unthinkable things
*Boston Globe*
A dramatic, intimate chronicle of a family implosion set in
unsettling times
*Publishers' Weekly*
If there is a more brilliant writer than Tóibín working today, I
don't know who that would be
*Karen Joy Fowler*
This is a novel about the way the members of a family keep secrets
from one another, tell lies and make mistakes.. .
*Literary Review*
Tóibín's retelling is governed by compassion and responsibility,
and focuses on the horrors that led Clytemnestra to her terrible
vengeance. Her sympathetic first-person narrative makes even
murder, for a moment, seem reasonable (...) Tóibín's prose is
precise and unadorned, the novel's moments of violence told with
brutal simplicity. But its greatest achievement is as a
page-turner. In a tale that has ended the same way for thousands of
years, Tóibín makes us hope for a different outcome
*The Economist*
[An] intense, thought-provoking and original novel . . . Toibin's
book transforms this ancient story into a lyrical, melancholy
meditation on closeted desire, which implicitly comments on the
aftermath of the Irish Troubles'
*TLS*
Graphic, vicious, beautiful retelling of ancient myths....
Ultimately the book is a stark, timeless and brilliantly rendered
tale of power in a world, as ever, riven by conflict.
*'I' Newspaper*
In a novel describing one of the Western world's oldest legends, in
which the gods are conspicuous by their absence, Tóibín achieves a
paradoxical richness of characterisation and a humanisation of the
mythological, marking House Of Names as the superbly realised work
of an author at the top of his game.
*Daily Express*
A spellbinding adaptation of the Clytemnestra myth, House of Names
considers the Mycenaen queen in all her guises: grieving mother,
seductress, ruthless leader - and victim of the ultimate
betrayal.
*Vogue*
A haunting story, largely because Tóibín tells it in spare,
resonant prose...
*New Statesman*
A Greek House of Cards... Just like Heaney at the end of his
Mycenae lookout, Toibin's novel augurs an era of renewal that comes
directly from the cessation of hostilities.
*Irish Times*
The book's mastery of pacing and tone affirm the writer as one of
our finest at work today.
*Irish Independent*
A daring, and triumphant return, to the Oresteia... bleakly
beautiful twilight of the Gods.
*The Arts Desk*
It couldn't have been done better
*Scotsman*
A visceral reworking of Oresteia
*Observer*
The escalation of violence and desire for revenge has deliberate
echoes of the Irish Troubles
*Observer Books of the Year*
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