Having only read Colm Toibin’s fiction prior to picking up his most recent collection of essays A Guest at the Feast, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I can promise you I did not expect him to talk so much about this genitalia, but the humor with which he reveals his bout with testicular cancer. The writing in that first essay is sharp, funny, and deeply honest in the way I’d known his novels to be; I was hooked.
The collection covers nearly thirty years of Toibin’s life and tackles his homeland (Ireland) as well as the Catholic Church, his own mother, and famous figures like Marilynne Robinson and Francis Stuart. All of the pieces have been published before as singular articles or essays, but brought together in this collection they render Toibin’s voice in a new, observant, often conspiratorial way. We readers are being let in on some sort of secret that he has willingly and joyfully, at times, shared with us.
The only reason that this isn’t a five-star review lies in the fact that some commentary may be inaccessible to those who do not get all of Toibin’s references, but–I didn’t get them all, I’m certain, and I absolutely loved A Guest at the Feast.
