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The Master

A Novel

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About The Book

“Colm Tóibín’s beautiful, subtle illumination of Henry James’s inner life” (The New York Times) captures the loneliness and hope of a master of psychological subtlety whose forays into intimacy inevitably fail those he tried to love.

Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of Henry James, a man born into one of America’s first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers.

The emotional intensity of Tóibín's portrait of James is riveting. Time and again, James, a master of psychological subtlety in his fiction, proves blind to his own heart and incapable of reconciling his dreams of passion with his own fragility. With stunningly resonant prose, “The Master is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist: artful, moving, and very beautiful” (The New York Times Book Review).

Reading Group Guide

Reading Group Guide for The Master by Colm Toibin
1. In this book Colm Toibin makes the novelist Henry James a protagonist. Do you think the novel is more powerful because it's based on a significant historical figure? Would it be equally powerful and resonant if the central figure were invented?
2. The novel reveals Henry James as a dedicated and inspired writer who relishes the solitary confinement that a writer's life often demands. The reader discovers early on that Henry "wished for solitude and for the comfort of knowing that his life depended not on the multitude but on remaining himself"(page 23). Does Henry achieve his wish of staying true to himself? How might have Henry betrayed his true feelings/ longings?
3. After the terrible reception of Henry's play, "Guy Domville," the narrator states that "he now had to face the melancholy fact that nothing he did would ever be popular or generally appreciated"(page 32). Henry is prolific, nonetheless, producing volumes of work during his writing life. Would you consider Henry's life successful? Do you think he considered his life's work a success?
4. Henry never marries and seems to have little interest in women beyond friendship, but there are several curious interactions between him and Paul Joukovsky, the war veteran Holmes, the manservant Hammond, and the sculptor Andersen. Discuss Henry's ambivalence toward his sexuality. Why do you suppose he never fully acts on his sexual impulses? How might the Oscar Wilde scandal have affected him?
5. Alice James, Henry's sister, clings to her sickness like an occupation. Do you think Alice manipulates her sickness to evoke pity? Henry's sister-in-law, Alice, asserts that Alice and her caretaker, Miss Loring, shared a "sort of happiness together that is not mentioned in the Bible"(p.528) What do you make of her relationship with Miss Loring?
6. Both Henry's sister, Alice, and his cousin Minny Temple shared a witty intellect and a sharp tongue that was never silenced in the company of men. Henry's father has strong feelings about the role of women claiming that "It is a woman's job to be submissive"(p.152). What commentary does the novel make about women's roles during the late nineteenth century? Overall, how are women portrayed?
7. Many of Henry's stories and novels are inspired directly from people and events in his life such that reality often blurs into fiction.
8. Henry shared an interesting relationship with his mother, silently conspiring with her about his so-called illness. Why does Henry so easily fall into his prescribed role? Why do you think Henry's mother becomes so doting and over-protective of him?
9. Bob and Wilkie, Henry's brothers, go off to war while Henry and William are sent to school. Henry experiences guilt even though he knows "he was not cut out to be a soldier"(p.267). Discuss Henry's conflicted feelings about the war, his lack of participation, and his obvious admiration for the soldiers, especially his brothers, who fought.
10. William disliked England, claiming its people had "no spiritual life." Henry, on the other hand, felt that New England had "no flavour, no life to dramatise." So Henry traveled and lived abroad, using the European landscape and its people as muse for many of his novels and stories. Discuss the differences of attitude and society between America and its mother country, England, during this time.
11. After being so inspired by Hawthorne's work, Henry seeks to know more about the author and his life. His brother, Bob, assumes Hawthorne is a minister because he "thought only women wrote stories." Consequently, Henry publishes his first story anonymously. What do you make of the stigma attached to male writers of fiction?
12. Henry's relationship with Constance Fenimore Woolson was one of his most intimate. Yet when she attempts to get too close, Henry becomes reclusive. Her sadness compounds and she eventually commits suicide. Do you think Henry's absence and withdrawal lead to her death? Discuss his guilt associated with Constance's suicide.
13. After Henry allows the sister of his servant, Mrs. Smith, to coalesce in his home, the boundaries between servant and master become less stringent. Henry begins to doubt his authority, feeling that Mrs. Smith "had won some invisible battle with him which allowed her to make herself at home in other subtle ways in the household" (page 334). Describe Henry's relationship with his servants, and his strange inability to confront the situation.
14. Henry's American privilege allows him to travel Europe and socialize in elite European circles. What statements does the novel make about class? Compare the English ideas surrounding class with those of the Americans during the late 1800's.
15. William, Henry's eldest brother sees himself as a "practical man, a family man, a man who did not write fictions but gave lectures, an American man plain in his habits and arguments, representing gruff masculinity against his brother's effete style"(page 513). Discuss the sibling rivalry of sorts that exists between Henry and his eldest brother, William. What is William's opinion of Henry's lifestyle and career choice?
16. Henry prefers to maintain a polite distance between himself and his acquaintances. He was a keen listener and observer but was "not prepared to reveal the mind at work, the imagination, or depth of feeling"(page 366). Discuss the narrator's revelations about the mind and imagination of Henry James.
17. As Henry ages, the narrator makes it clear that, "He did not wish to be regarded as a fossil, but he also wanted to keep the past to himself, a prized and private possession"(page 451). How important are nostalgia and memory to the telling of Henry's story? Why do you think Henry was so guarded with himself and his past?
18. A good portion of the novel is told in flashback; the reader is almost always reliving a memory along with Henry. Do you find this style of narrative effective?

About The Author

Photograph by Reynaldo Rivera

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Scribner (May 3, 2005)
  • Length: 352 pages
  • ISBN13: 9780743250412

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Raves and Reviews

Praise for The Master

"Exquisite storytelling." Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy

“A spectacular novel.” Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

“A gorgeous portrait of a complex and passionate man.” Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Tóibín takes us almost shockingly close to the mystery of art itself. A remarkably, utterly original book.” Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours

“A marvel.” John Updike, The New Yorker

“A deep, lovely, and enthralling book that engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life.” Shirely Hazzard, author of The Great Fire

“Colm Tóibín does more than observe Henry James, he inhabits him. And from that ingenious perspective, he has produced an astonishing tour de force.” John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The City of Falling Angels

“Superbly controlled ... this novel is a masterful, unshowy meditation on work, ambition, friendship, longing and mortality.” —Chicago Tribune

“Tóibín’s work displays the kind of depth and sensitivity that few authors can offer.... The result is a beautiful, haunting portrayal that measures the amplitude of silence and trajectory of a glance in the life of one of the world’s most astute social observers.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Extraordinary . . .Tóibín paints a graceful, terribly sad portrait.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A deep, lovely, and enthralling book that engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life: splendidly conceived and composed by a writer who is himself a master of his art.” —Shirley Hazzard, author of The Great Fire

“An indelibly beautiful novel.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“The Master is a superbly researched nuanced portrait.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“In Tóibín’s skillful hands, what unfolds is a seamless and ultimately moving portrait of a fading era.” —The Boston Globe

“In Tóibín’s luminous fifth novel, he imagines the life of this intensely private American novelist. ... It’s a delicate, mysterious process, this act of creation, fraught with psychological tension, but Tóibín captures it beautifully.” —People

“This is an audacious, profound, and wonderfully intelligent book.” —The Guardian (U.K.)

“Colm Tóibín’s magnificent novel is a moving meditation on solitude as the wellspring of beauty.” —Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader

“Colm Tóibín has a perfect understanding of the greatest of all American writers and accompanies him to Rome, Newport, Paris, Florence, the London of Oscar Wilde. Nothing about this book, however, feels piecemeal or improvised; it is a sustained performance worthy of the Master.” —Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story and Fanny: A Fiction

“The Master proceeds with conversational naturalness, reading nothing like a biography. Tóibín uses a brilliant episodic architecture.... The cumulative effect is captivating.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A formidably brilliant performance.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Colm Tóibín’s beautiful, subtle illumination of Henry James’s inner life . . . works so brilliantly.” —The New York Times

“Beautifully written, humane and spiced with welcome wit, The Master is a masterful work of fiction.” —The Courier Post

“A quiet tour de force: a work of deep seriousness and sympathy that gives us a genius in his full human dimensions. ... [This] profound novel is—dare one say it?—masterly.” —New York Observer

“Tóibín has written a work of great skill and ingenuity.” —The Weekly Standard

“A marvelous literary achievement.” —BookPage

“With this tribute to Henry James, Colm Tóibín allows us to become the master himself.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Even the reader who knows little about Henry James or his work can enjoy this marvelously intelligent and engaging novel, which presents not on a silver platter, but in tender, opened hands a beautifully nuanced psychological portrait.” —Booklist

“The Master is eminently approachable, an altogether wonderful experience.” —The Gay and Lesbian Review

“I can think of no other fictional portrait of a great writer—and the writer’s whole distinguished family—which is steadily compelling as an eloquent story and is also a genuine contribution to literary understanding.” —Reynolds Price, author of Noble Norfleet

“It is unlikely a better book about James will ever be written.” —Irish Voice

“[An] enthralling novel. . . . Tóibín displays—in a manner that is masterly—the wit and metaphorical flair, psychological subtlety and phrases of pouncing incisiveness with which a great novelist captured the nuances of consciousness and duplicities of society.” —Sunday Times (U.K.)

“To make a novel out of a writer’s life, and to have it turn out to be a genuine novel and not a disguised biography, is a strategic feat: Tóibín’s shy sly cadences and structural ingenuities are discreetly brilliant and always effective. His rendering of the first hints, or sensations, of the tales as they form in James’s thoughts is itself an instance of writer’s wizardry. This beautiful and perceptive novel will earn the rapt admiration of Jamesians and non-Jamesians alike.” —Cynthia Ozick

Awards and Honors

  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
  • New York Times Book Review Ten Best Books of the Year

Resources and Downloads

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More books from this author: Colm Toibin