Between exile and romantic reunion, Colm Toíbín, the master of emotional intimacy, reconnects with the emancipated heroine of Brooklyn. Great style and art of living.
Long Island, 1970s. Eilis Lacey receives a visit from a stranger announcing to him her husband’s infidelities. Not far from their home, a woman is pregnant with said Tony. “ So as soon as the bastard is born I will bring him here. » If the person concerned confesses half-heartedly, he then wallows in silence. Refusing to have to raise someone else’s child, Eilis comes out of her usual reserve to confront the fickle husband but comes up against Italian siblings who stands up. It was decided that Tony’s mother would take the child, that the baby would be adopted…And that Eilis would find nothing wrong with it. Taking advantage of her mother’s birthday, she announces her departure for Ireland with her two teenagers. Without promise of returnhis trip signals an ultimatum. Back home, in Enniscorthy, she found Jim Farrell, with whom she was in love before he left for the United States, more than 20 years ago. The pub boss is about to announce her engagement with Nancy, a 46-year-old widow and former best friend of Eilis… But the reunion revives the embers of a passion upset.
Back to basics
In The MagicianColm Toíbín slipped brilliantly in the shadow of Thomas Manna self-effacing giant walking his destiny of glory like a long path of exile. A theme that runs through all his books, where the vicissitudes of uprooting unfold in the background. Reconnecting with the heroine of Brooklyn (his 2009 bestseller), the Irishman returns to his lands in County Wexfordat the time of his youth. It is not necessary to have read these first adventures to taste the spell that this portrait of a determined woman, torn between two continents, provides. Because with this virtuoso of introspection, all the space is left to the characters, without judging them, giving everyone equal attention. Sunday lunch at expensive prices, difficult choice of a dress in a luxury boutique or stroll by the sea, the author of The Master causes a teeming soap opera to emerge everywhere.
All his talent thus converges at the heart of infinite variations of the psyche, with the climax of delays in modesty. Subtle, his art weighs the weight of the unsaid and the conventions, the suffocation of the family gangue, and calligraphs the stinging expectations like the silences which speak volumes. “ Family is often the worst thing. » A wedding scene, experienced through the eyes of each protagonist, constitutes one of the highlights of the book. The mastery of the staging evokes the Homeric opening of The Deer Hunter (Journey to the End of Hell) by Michael Cimino. The nudge there is sharpsly humor. Tangled up in the big family net, life is there, simply. At the heart of this romance novel pulses a delicious study of morals and a portrait of a remarkable woman, the independence of mind anchored to the body.
