Colm Toibin: Novels of the State, Childhood and Religion

This monograph is a serious sustained study of one of Ireland’s most important emerging literary practitioners: Colm Toibin. Professor Turner focuses on the origins of Toibin’s career, his stylistic and thematic shift that became apparent in THE STORY OF NIGHT(1996). Another aspect of this critical evaluation is an examination of Toibin’s career as a journalist and non fiction writer. This period in Toibin’s life began the process of investigation into Marian veneration and belief one of the key elements and characterics of Irish Catholicism especially in rural and small town Southern Ireland. Turner discusses THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP, Marian veneration in Ireland(SEEING IS BELIEVING), Toibin’s Hispanic and Internationalist vocabularies(THE SOUTH and THE STORY OF THE NIGHT), sons and lovers in Toibin’s fictive universe (THE HEATHER BLAZING and THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP), religion and journalism as in the nonfiction THE SIGN OF THE CROSS and SEEING IS BELIEVING and finally Toibin’s sexual politics and homosexuality and their effect on his work.