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A Guest at the Feast: Essays Audiobook
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Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by LitHub and The Millions!
From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a “not to be missed” (LitHub) collection of eleven essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature.
“IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS.” So begins Colm Tóibín’s fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for cancer. Tóibín survives, but he has entered, as he says, “the age of one ball.” The second essay in this seductive collection is a memoir about growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in the small town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, the setting for many of Tóibín’s novels and stories, including Brooklyn, The Blackwater Lightship, and Nora Webster. Tóibín describes his education by priests, several of whom were condemned years later for abuse. He writes about Irish history and literature, and about the long, tragic journey toward legal and social acceptance of homosexuality.
In Part Two, Tóibín profiles three complex and vexing popes—John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. And in Part Three, he writes about a trio of authors who reckon with religion in their fiction. The final essay, “Alone in Venice,” is a gorgeous account of Tóibín’s journey, at the height of the pandemic, to the beloved city where he has set some of his most dazzling scenes. The streets, canals, churches, and museums were empty. He had them to himself, an experience both haunting and exhilarating.
“A tantalizing glimpse into Tóibín’s full fictional powers,” (The Sunday Times, London) A Guest at the Feast is both an intimate encounter with a supremely creative artist and a glorious celebration of writing.
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“[A] magnificent volume…Throughout, the poetry of Tóibín’s prose is as impressive as always. In the title piece, he writes that his mother was ‘what most of us still write for: the ordinary reader, curious and intelligent and demanding, ready to be moved and changed.’ Readers like her will savor every page of this book.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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About Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is the multiaward–winning and New York Times bestseller author of eleven novels, including Long Island, which was an Oprah’s Book Club Pick and named a Best Book of the Year by Time, the New Yorker, Washington Post, Irish Times, London Independent, Glamour magazine, and many other major media. He has also written two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He was also awarded the Prix Femina spécial for his body of work.