The Empty Family, Colm Toibin
The Empty Family, Colm Toibin
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Empty Family
Stories

Author: Colm Toibin

Narrator: Colm Toibin, Terry Donnelly, John Keating, Jeff Woodman, Alma Cuervo, Tim Gerard Reynolds, Piter Marek

Unabridged: 8 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/04/2011


Synopsis

The bestselling and award-winning author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín, returns with a stunning collection of stories—“a book that’s both a perfect introduction to Tóibín and, for longtime fans, a bracing pleasure” (The Seattle Times).

Critics praised Brooklyn as a “beautifully rendered portrait of Brooklyn and provincial Ireland in the 1950s.” In The Empty Family, Tóibín has extended his imagination further, offering an incredible range of periods and characters—people linked by love, loneliness, desire—“the unvarying dilemmas of the human heart” ( The Observer, UK).

In the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a relationship between Pakistani workers in Barcelona—a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence. In “Two Women,” an eminent and taciturn Irish set designer takes a job in her homeland and must confront emotions she has long repressed. “Silence” is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party.

The Empty Family will further cement Tóibín’s status as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” ( Los Angeles Times ).

About Colm Toibin

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah’s Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of The Writers' Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; 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 was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He was shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize. He was also awarded the Bodley Medal, the Würth Prize for European Literature, and the Prix Femina spécial for his body of work. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve on November 25, 2015

It’s not a very promising start, I know, when a reviewer’s lead sentence begs your indulgence. In this case, it’s to allow my personal reading history with the talented Mr. Tóibín. The first book of his I read was the much-loved Brooklyn in 2010. In fact, I would have purchased the movie rights then......more

Goodreads review by Constantine on May 01, 2021

Rating: Excellent Genre: Literary Fiction + Short Stories + LGBT This is the first time I read a book written by Colm Tóibín. The Empty Family is a collection of nine short stories. Some of the stories I liked right away and others took me some time until I connected to them. They all have different t......more

Goodreads review by Sketchbook on January 30, 2016

Be advised : Colm Toibin is the new "lit darling." The lemmings are racing to the Irish coast. I don't get it. Much of his writing is "beautiful," but it's also like one of those crusty French meringue / bisquits -- lovely to look at, but nothing inside. Having just read these 9 stories, I can recal......more

Goodreads review by Sheenagh on June 11, 2011

If all the stories in this collection were as absorbing as "Silence" and "The Colour of Shadows", I'd have given it a 5 or 4. On the other hand, if they were all as inconsequential and self-absorbed as "Barcelona, 1975" or "One Minus One" it'd be a 1. They all concern people alienated in some way fro......more

Goodreads review by AdiTurbo on October 24, 2017

One of the best collections of stories I have read in a long while. Toibin is a master, whose every written word is fully thought out. The stories all revolve around love and its loss, loneliness and family. The concept of family is used here in its broader sense, and means many different things to......more