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Title: The Master by Colm Toibin ISBN: 0-7432-5040-0 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 02 June, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Must for James Fans
Comment: I've read most of James's novels and the five-volume biography by Leon Edel, and Toibin succeeds in this high-wire act of a novel to get inside Henry James's skin in a language that is remarkably Jamesian in its style and reticence. He has a deft hand when dealing with James's homoerotic longings -- which remain nothing but longings -- but also delves into his his relationships with the women whose friendships were vitally important to him and with his family, most notably his sister Alice and his brother James. Henry James really does come alive in this book -- even more so than in the biographies.
Rating: 3
Summary: Overwrought
Comment: Toibin is a wonderful writer. My favorite book of his is The South. Unfortunately I found this novel (about five years in the life of Henry James) to be a little overwrought and at times bordering on pretentious. It seems self-consciously literary. One can almost feel the writer straining at the bit. There are some wonderful moments -- an amazing scene where James throws a friend's dresses in a canal (based on a true story). What is also annoying is that Toibin's dialogue is not consistent -- after reading the novel I went to the five-volume biography to see where Toibin had gotten his images. At times Toibin uses the literal words of James', at other times (when the dialogue is best) it is invented. I feel that I have not sung Toibin enough. He, along with McCann and McGahern, is among the best of Irish writers. Anyone interested in craft and beauty should read his work.
Rating: 5
Summary: James as James saw himself
Comment: Most novels about the life of an author (or other artist) fall into the "Lust for Life" trap: they focus on the more sensational aspects of the author's life; and they portray artistic creation as a temporary madness, during which the author is taken out of him/herself into the exalted state in which a work of art is produced. James, by contrast, dealt in nuance and restraint, small gestures with enormous meaning, and unexpressed desires leading to endless regret. I felt that Toibin captured James' voice perfectly, both in his own writing style and in what he chooses to tell (and not tell) about the author. James was exquisitely sensitive and kind, but both his New England upbringing and his homosexuality (which, if expressed, could have had serious consequences, as the chapter about Wilde makes clear) combined to turn his warmer impulses inward. His personal life may appear to have been a series of (mostly) dead ends, but that's the tragedy that he turned into art. (And, having always thought of James as an effete man-about-town who happened to be a good novelist, I was surprised to learn how extremely hard-working a writer he was, generating a constant stream of essays, reviews, and stories.) The conversion of life into literature happens, not because of a visitation by the Muse, but by the continual gathering of small impressions and linking them together to form a coherent, compelling whole. James, an inveterate journal-and-notebook-keeper, gave his biographers a lot of material to work with, but this novel is far and away THE most convincing depiction of the creative process that I've ever read. A master as seen by a master.
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Title: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0399151613 Publisher: Marian Wood Book Pub. Date: 22 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Great Fire: A Novel by Shirley Hazzard ISBN: 0374166447 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Blackwater Lightship: A Novel by Colm Toibin ISBN: 0743203313 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 05 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Living to Tell the Tale by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ, EDITH GROSSMAN ISBN: 1400041341 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb ISBN: 039302038X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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