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A review by jfl
The Empty Family: Stories by Colm Tóibín
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.