![]() ![]() "I know exactly where and when I heard it - the basic three sentences of the story," he remembers. It is also, like so much Irish fiction, a kind of elegy for Tóibín's childhood home. The new book is full of sly fun, lovely comic observation and an almost tangible pleasure in storytelling. He has been incubating it throughout his creative life. Brooklyn, his first novel since The Master narrowly failed to win the Booker Prize in 2004, springs directly from a story he heard in the aftermath of his father's death, when he was just 12. Even if he did not have a new novel to promote, Tóibín gives the impression he could talk about books and writing to a wall. Once the dust of the Hyland interview began to settle, his American publicist said, wearily: "Could you not go silent for a while?"įat chance. "I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write." And he was always more of a joker than some of his books suggest. More serious now, he says that this "deep need" first manifested itself when he was 12. Tóibín has the head of a Celtic statue but the body and movements of a leprechaun, and his conversation, similarly, flits between gravitas and levity. "And then you know - wham! It was me and Julie Myerson." He now concedes ruefully that, for the immediate future, he is going to be "the guy who wants the money". ![]()
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