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View Larger Picture of The Master  by Colm Toibin

The Master

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The Master
by Authors: Colm Toibin

Hardcover
Average Customer Rating:

A view from the verge.

Toibin certainly knows the facts of Henry James' life; he knows his writing and he himself writes in a clear homage to the master's style, often achieving a beauty which owes nothing to imitation. But what he really attempts in this novel is to look inside the inner life of an author who was so good at portraying the inner lives of others. I was especially impressed by the sensitivity with which James' unconsummated homosexuality is treated. As the book progresses, these instances are seen as but part of a larger pattern of friendships and subsequent withdrawals. This pattern certainly owes something to James' character, but it also reflects the necessary isolation of the writer who must always view life from the verge, so to speak, it being impossible to simultaneously dissect emotional relationships while entering into them fully.

Taken cumulatively this is all very impressive, but the marriage of biography and novel is not always successful. In particular, successive chapters seem at the time like disconnected episodes, with no necessary order other than the succession of events in the five-year span which Toibin uses as the anchor for a tissue of memories covering virtually the whole of the writer's life. So not a book whose plot keeps one reading, but one whose insights and incidental joys repay one well for one's persistence.

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Toibin, sublime master

If you are not familiar with Colm Toibin, you've a lot to catch up with. He is a masterful writer. "Blackwater Lightship," made into a so-so movie for TV, was a jarring, moving book, one of those with characters and motives you still think about years later.

"The Master" is majestic in its prose, as befits the subject matter, a fictionalized biography of Henry James, for whom the language of writing was as important as the story itself. Toibin has used language in writing this engaging biographical novel that is quite different from the more conversational language he used in his previous works.

The character of Henry James comes alive as a conflicted, somewhat inhibited novelist, for whom writing was a must, but a painful process nevertheless. The character's homosexuality colors his life, but does not overshadow the rest of his being, as is appropriate.

If you have any interest whatsoever in modern, important literature in the English language, you cannot not read this book.

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A MASTERPIECE

A fictional biography of Henry James, this masterpiece truly deserves being hailed by The New York Times as one of the five best novels of 2004.

Anyone who loves Henry James will find this book an enriching, engrossing portrait that combines the pace, plot and psychological insights of a novel filled with the thoroughly researched facts of James' colorful life.

A must read for anyone who loves good literature, Henry James, and who wants insights into how a writer achieves great art.

When I finished this book, which lingers with you, I wanted nothing more than to visit James' cosy and comfortable home in the countryside of England that he loved so much and that Colm evokes with such splendour.



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