Praise for Mothers and Sons

"The most striking example of Tóibín's emotional control comes in the last and best story, 'A Long Winter.'" —The Guardian

“These nine tales read like miniature novels; they are so assuredly paced and plangent in tone that it is no exaggeration to compare them to Joyce’s classic Dubliners.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Brilliant… transfixing.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Though each story stands alone—as do the characters—the magic of Mothers and Sons is how beautifully they come together as a whole.” —The Miami Herald

“Everything we’ve come to expect of Tóibín: chilled, sharp prose revealing complex, contradictory feelings, and an equally acute eye for the way character and environment trigger action… A beautiful, seamless, affecting piece of writing.” —The Seattle Times

“Colm Tóibín is one of those extraordinary artists whose work is a kind of dramatic dialogue between an icily observant intellect and a tender heart. . . . Mothers and Sons establishes him as a short story writer of first rank.” —Los Angeles Times

“An intense, gorgeous collection of thematically linked stories.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“In this beautifully unshowy book, Colm Tóibín reveals himself once again as a writer who understands the tenuousness of love and comfort—and, after everything, its necessity.” —The New York Review of Books

“Finely crafted, with vivid characters and original stories.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Tóibín teases the drama out of the everyday while bringing the extraordinarily dramatic down to a scale that’s both easy to grasp and hard to avoid.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Wonderfully satisfying and engrossing.” —The Irish Times

“Every character, every relationship, is made up of the accretions of an undescribed but palpable past, something that makes them both vividly and solidly real to the reader, and as mysterious as other people always are.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“A deeply satisfying and memorable read.” —The Globe and Mail