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A review by ssofia_reads
The South by Colm Tóibín
3.0
I generally enjoy Colm Tóibín's easy prose that has a directness to it while still taking advantage of the beauty of the English language. His books have the feel of a modern classic about them and The South is no exception. However, overall, The South fell short of my expectations and for anyone wanting to try Tóibín for the first time, I strongly recommend you choose another one of his novels.
The book follows Katherine Proctor, an Irishwoman who leaves her husband and son to start a new life as an artist in Spain in the 1950s. Many events and aspects of characters are heavily related to the political climate and historical events in Spain and Ireland, but Tóibín doesn't particularly elaborate on them. If the reader doesn't have prior knowledge of them, it makes relating to the characters and understanding their motives a little challenging.
The book feels rather disjointed and the narrative isn't easy to follow. The book jumps back and forth in time, some of the chapters are written in letter or diary format, some are in third person, the chapter titles do not seem to follow a clear pattern. Initially I thought that perhaps each chapter is meant to represent a work of art - each is a separate snapshot of life but at the same time there is a level of connection between them. However, at no point did I feel this was confirmed or denied.
Tóibín himself states in the Afterword: If there is a jaggedness and intensity about the tone and structure of the novel, it comes from the fact that much of it was written in snatched time. Perhaps what I experienced was just this. I highly recommend reading through the Afterword if you have one of the newer editions of the book. It explains the background of the book and how it came to be in great detail and cleared a little bit of the confusion that I had been left with while reading.
The book follows Katherine Proctor, an Irishwoman who leaves her husband and son to start a new life as an artist in Spain in the 1950s. Many events and aspects of characters are heavily related to the political climate and historical events in Spain and Ireland, but Tóibín doesn't particularly elaborate on them. If the reader doesn't have prior knowledge of them, it makes relating to the characters and understanding their motives a little challenging.
The book feels rather disjointed and the narrative isn't easy to follow. The book jumps back and forth in time, some of the chapters are written in letter or diary format, some are in third person, the chapter titles do not seem to follow a clear pattern. Initially I thought that perhaps each chapter is meant to represent a work of art - each is a separate snapshot of life but at the same time there is a level of connection between them. However, at no point did I feel this was confirmed or denied.
Tóibín himself states in the Afterword: If there is a jaggedness and intensity about the tone and structure of the novel, it comes from the fact that much of it was written in snatched time. Perhaps what I experienced was just this. I highly recommend reading through the Afterword if you have one of the newer editions of the book. It explains the background of the book and how it came to be in great detail and cleared a little bit of the confusion that I had been left with while reading.