Book Summary and Reviews of The News from Dublin by Colm Toibin

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Marianne Vincent

leave the reader wanting more.
The News From Dublin is a collection of nine stories by award-winning, bestselling Irish author, Colm Toibin. The stories vary in length from five pages to ninety-six pages, but each has the hallmark of a writer appointed Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.

In Journey To Galway, it is decided that his mother is the person most appropriate to deliver to his wife the telegram announcing the death of fighter pilot, Robert, during a war fought in a British uniform. Is their grief tempered by his poor behaviour?

In Summer of ’38, in the Pyrenees village of Sort, widowed Marta is alerted by her youngest daughter that a man from the electric company wants to talk to her. He is charting the events of the war in their valley, and hopes she will lunch with a retired General who remembers her from the summer of ’38. She manages to sidestep the lunch by insisting on a visit from her eldest daughter, delighting in the near-miss proximity of father and daughter who have never, and will never, meet.

In Five Bridges, after thirty years in California on a tourist visa, Paul, now almost fifty, works as a talented but unlicensed plumber. When the new POTUS touts draconian immigration laws, he understands he will need to return to Ireland, leaving behind a twelve-year-old daughter whom, he hopes, her mother (his now-married ex-girlfriend) will allow to visit Dublin. It’s clear he will never be able to return.

In Sleep, an Irish New Yorker is told by his Jewish lover that his disturbed sleep is a deal-breaker for their relationship. The younger man suggests that, until he sees a therapist, advisedly Irish, they need to take a break. It requires a trip to Dublin.

In The News From Dublin, when a radical new treatment for TB is mentioned in The Irish Times, high-school teacher Maurice is asked to go to Dublin on behalf of his quickly-deteriorating younger brother. Their father having been in Frongoch prison with the now Minister for Health, the family feels this will give him some leverage to fast-track treatment. The family hopes the news from Dublin will be favourable.

In Barton Springs, a man traveling to Austin, Texas recalls an encounter at a swimming pool soon after his brother’s death, and vows he and his companion will revisit the place of their meeting.

In A Sum Of Money, having watched his father open a lockbox without a key, Dan decides this knowledge will be handy when he returns to boarding school. He’s only there by the grace of his Liverpool uncle, his family being very poor farmers with no cash to spare for pocket money. He carefully and successfully steals from fellow students until one day he gets greedy.

In A Free Man, after ten years in Arbour Hill prison, a high-school maths teacher is finally free and quits Ireland to live in Barcelona. His family severed all ties because of the nature of his crime, and he chooses Barcelona because another man who quit the same seminary years earlier and didn’t reject him outright, has settled there. Denis offers him a few pointers, but Joe makes every effort to stay under the radar, especially of Irish tourists. Is he safe, though?

In The Catalan Girls, fifty years after their mother brought them to Argentina, Montse and her older sisters learn of the death of a family member and travel back to the Catalan village where their mother grew up. And while Nuria and Conxita have satisfactory lives in Argentina, Montse is happy to leave, but doesn’t share her intention not to return until they have been in the Pyrenees for some time.

Toibin is another author who writes the everyday moments of ordinary life exceptionally well. This is a collection of beautifully told tales that often leave the reader wanting more.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Picador.

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