Novelist and critic Colm Toibin provides a fascinating exploration of writers and their families (Entertainment Weekly) and an excellent guide through the dark terrain of unconscious desires (The Evening Standard) in this brilliant collection of essays that explore the relationships of writers to their families and their work.Colm Toibin–celebrated both for his award-winning fiction and his provocative book reviews and essays–traces the intriguing, often twisted family ties of writers in the books they leave behind. Through the relationship between W. B. Yeats and his father, Thomas Mann and his children, Jane Austen and her aunts, and Tennessee Williams and his sister, Toibin examines a world of relations, richly comic or savage in their implications. Acutely perceptive and imbued with rare tenderness and wit, New Ways to Kill Your Mother is a fascinating look at writers’ most influential bonds and a secret key to understanding and enjoying their work.