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smemmott's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
hackedbyawriter's review against another edition
4.0
Had to read it for uni. Don’t really feel much for this
siria's review against another edition
3.0
As is often the case with a collection of short stories, I really enjoyed some of The Empty Family and others I didn't. Tóibín is at his best with the stories that are calm and reflective, almost like extracts from a longer novel, and he has a particular knack for capturing the rhythms of Irish speech—reading his dialogue is like hearing echoes from home. His prose can occasionally be a little purple and self-indulgent—'One Minus One' begins "The moon hangs low over Texas. The moon is my mother", which was almost enough to have me flicking on to the next story. I'm glad I stuck with it, though, because that story, about an émigré author racing back to Ireland from the States to be with his mother before she died, was beautifully observed and so unsettlingly close to some aspects of my grandmother's recent passing and my relationship with her that it had me in tears.
Other stories were too opaque for me, or seemed to rely too much on the Shock Value of two men having oral or anal sex. I'm not sure how much that's still the case in 21st century Ireland, outside of your average member of Youth Defence or so on, and they're unlikely to be picking up a book by an openly gay author in the first place, and when you strip away the Shock Value, then you have some rather dull Tab A into Slot B sex. Which may, in a way, have been Tóibín's point—gay people can have boring sex too!—but if I've read hotter stuff that managed to convey better characterisation than happens here.
Other stories were too opaque for me, or seemed to rely too much on the Shock Value of two men having oral or anal sex. I'm not sure how much that's still the case in 21st century Ireland, outside of your average member of Youth Defence or so on, and they're unlikely to be picking up a book by an openly gay author in the first place, and when you strip away the Shock Value, then you have some rather dull Tab A into Slot B sex. Which may, in a way, have been Tóibín's point—gay people can have boring sex too!—but if I've read hotter stuff that managed to convey better characterisation than happens here.
kim318's review
hopeful
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
walter_heape's review against another edition
5.0
Like Leavitt’s “Family Dancing” or Munro’s “Moons of Jupiter”, this collection also reminds me why I love short stories. Several of them left me a bit breathless—just amazing work.
mary_yankulova's review against another edition
4.0
Страхотни разкази, страхотен Тойбин!
Отнемам 1 звездичка, защото имаше прекалено много графични сексуални гей сцени.
Нямам нищо против тематиката, една от любимите ми книги е “Прелест” на Мацантини, но можеше доста да се обере от описанията…
Любим разказ - “Новата Испания”.
Отнемам 1 звездичка, защото имаше прекалено много графични сексуални гей сцени.
Нямам нищо против тематиката, една от любимите ми книги е “Прелест” на Мацантини, но можеше доста да се обере от описанията…
Любим разказ - “Новата Испания”.
corinneavital's review against another edition
3.0
Had a hard time rating this one--Toibin's language is lyrical, evocative, and the collection is almost worth reading on that basis alone. Everything else--pacing, setting, characterization--is handled with equal skill, and then we get to the end. Most of endings left me unsatisfied and disappointed--it was all intricate, well-crafted set-ups with endings that dissipated into insignificance.
You can make the case that this was a stylistic choice--stories that act more like a mirror of our own lives: a series of moments and events that are left mostly unresolved, where attempts to discover their greater significance often fail. I like my short stories to be resolved, to feel complete and closed when I am done with them, and ultimately, Toibin's pieces didn't feel like short stories to me.
You can make the case that this was a stylistic choice--stories that act more like a mirror of our own lives: a series of moments and events that are left mostly unresolved, where attempts to discover their greater significance often fail. I like my short stories to be resolved, to feel complete and closed when I am done with them, and ultimately, Toibin's pieces didn't feel like short stories to me.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review
4.0
‘I said that my real family is you.’
The people who feature in the nine stories that make up this collection seem to be solitary individuals with strong needs for personal autonomy. This results in a sense of loneliness, of detachment from the people and events surrounding them, even when they return home for a funeral or to attend to some unfinished business. But loneliness is sometimes regretted, at least a little. Consider Lady Gregory reflecting on her affair with the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in ‘Silence’, feeling the lack of ‘a close discreet friend to whom such things could be whispered.’ Carme, in ‘The New Spain’ has travelled home to Menorca to claim her inheritance. While she feels ‘no desire to make contact with anyone, no one she had left behind in London, and no one here…’ her energies are absorbed in recapturing aspects of the past. Once she has rid herself of her parents and resolved to remove the wall that her father built between her grandmother’s house and the sea, she feels ‘a contentment that she had never expected to feel, an ease she had not believed would ever come her way.’ Both women, in their different ways, are drawn to the past.
Other stories include ‘Two Women’ in which a well-known but difficult Irish-born set designer returns to Ireland and comes face to face with an aspect of her past life, when she meets the wife of her long ago (and now dead) lover. ‘The Street’ in which Malik and Abdul, two Pakistani workers in Barcelona, surreptitiously establish and then come to terms with the nature of their relationship is both the longest story in the collection and in many ways the most challenging. The loneliness, in both these cases, is at least partly a consequence of choice.
The past is one theme in this collection, as is loss and exile. In a couple of cases, exile is a consequence of relationship choice, in others it is because of geography. Homosexuality, in a couple of stories, adds another dimension. Abdul and Malik become each other’s real family while other relationships (in this and other stories) are threatened.
In these stories, Colm Tóibín has created different worlds full of challenges for each individually defined family. It’s deceptively easy to read - the writing is beautiful – but not always easy to understand, and never entirely comfortable.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
The people who feature in the nine stories that make up this collection seem to be solitary individuals with strong needs for personal autonomy. This results in a sense of loneliness, of detachment from the people and events surrounding them, even when they return home for a funeral or to attend to some unfinished business. But loneliness is sometimes regretted, at least a little. Consider Lady Gregory reflecting on her affair with the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in ‘Silence’, feeling the lack of ‘a close discreet friend to whom such things could be whispered.’ Carme, in ‘The New Spain’ has travelled home to Menorca to claim her inheritance. While she feels ‘no desire to make contact with anyone, no one she had left behind in London, and no one here…’ her energies are absorbed in recapturing aspects of the past. Once she has rid herself of her parents and resolved to remove the wall that her father built between her grandmother’s house and the sea, she feels ‘a contentment that she had never expected to feel, an ease she had not believed would ever come her way.’ Both women, in their different ways, are drawn to the past.
Other stories include ‘Two Women’ in which a well-known but difficult Irish-born set designer returns to Ireland and comes face to face with an aspect of her past life, when she meets the wife of her long ago (and now dead) lover. ‘The Street’ in which Malik and Abdul, two Pakistani workers in Barcelona, surreptitiously establish and then come to terms with the nature of their relationship is both the longest story in the collection and in many ways the most challenging. The loneliness, in both these cases, is at least partly a consequence of choice.
The past is one theme in this collection, as is loss and exile. In a couple of cases, exile is a consequence of relationship choice, in others it is because of geography. Homosexuality, in a couple of stories, adds another dimension. Abdul and Malik become each other’s real family while other relationships (in this and other stories) are threatened.
In these stories, Colm Tóibín has created different worlds full of challenges for each individually defined family. It’s deceptively easy to read - the writing is beautiful – but not always easy to understand, and never entirely comfortable.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
jfl's review against another edition
4.0
The nine stories by Colm Tóibín published under the title of “The Empty Family” are, as would be expected from a writer of Tóibín’s talents, exquisitely crafted. They are rhythmic. Together, they explore the themes of solitude, exile, apartness, grief, death and loss. They range in time from the late XIX Century to the early XXI Century; across two continents and several countries and peoples. Ireland and the Irish figure predominately. But we encounter Americans, Spaniards and Pakistani as well.
Toibin does probe the souls of his narrators. The accounts are often intimate, secretive. Reading them it is easy to feel like an intruder viewing stealthily and from the shadows a private drama—looking into private worlds. And they lay exposed the contradictions, struggles and ambiguities of the human family.
The pieces are all heavily reflective. They are enveloped in somber tones. People return to earlier homes or places, with histories of broken or exhausted loves. Critical life situations, in other cases, resurrect memories of alienations or of past, now unproductive, connections. In ”The Street”, two Pakistani immigrants in Barcelona forge a new family structure in the midst of an exploitive sub-culture. But for all the somber tones of the stories, the endings are almost all universally brighter. The narrators come to peaceful and, in the case of Carme in “New Spain” and of the narrator in “The Pearl Fishers”, contented ends.
Toibin does probe the souls of his narrators. The accounts are often intimate, secretive. Reading them it is easy to feel like an intruder viewing stealthily and from the shadows a private drama—looking into private worlds. And they lay exposed the contradictions, struggles and ambiguities of the human family.
The pieces are all heavily reflective. They are enveloped in somber tones. People return to earlier homes or places, with histories of broken or exhausted loves. Critical life situations, in other cases, resurrect memories of alienations or of past, now unproductive, connections. In ”The Street”, two Pakistani immigrants in Barcelona forge a new family structure in the midst of an exploitive sub-culture. But for all the somber tones of the stories, the endings are almost all universally brighter. The narrators come to peaceful and, in the case of Carme in “New Spain” and of the narrator in “The Pearl Fishers”, contented ends.