~ finding the right voice ~
Each of the nine stories focuses on a moment in which an unspoken balance shifts; in which a mother or son do battle, or experience a sudden crisis, thus leaving their conception of who they are subtly or seriously altered. " "A son buries his mother and goes out to a drug-fuelled rave on a remote beach near Dublin. In the course of this one night his grief and desire for raw feeling combine with exquisite intensity. A mother sings about treacherous love to a rapt crowd of musicians in a local pub. Her unacknowledged son meets her eyes, unable to approach her. And in 'A Long Winter', Colm Toibin's finest piece of fiction to date a son goes searching for his mother in the snow-covered Pyrenees. "--BOOK JACKET