The Master (novel)

infobox Book |
name = The Master
title_orig =
translator =


author = Colm Tóibín
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country = Ireland
language = English
series =
genre = Novel
publisher = Picador
release_date = 2004
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0-330-43788-7 (hardback edition)
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Master" is a novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It is his fifth novel and it was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize and received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year Award and, in France, "Le prix du meilleur livre étranger" in 2005.

Plot summary

It depicts the American-born writer Henry James in the final years of the 19th century. The eleven chapters of the novel are labelled from January 1895 to October 1899 and follow the writer from his failure at his attempt to have success in the London theatre, with the play "Guy Domville", to his seclusion in the town of Rye, East Sussex, where he'd produce several masterpieces in the following years at an incredible rate.

The novel starts with a portrait of Henry as a public figure who feels humiliated in an unexpected way, not just in the public side of his writing career but also in a more personal way, in which all the precautions he had taken to carry on with his life as he wished it to be, come to a crisis. Henry resolves to reduce his public life by buying a house in Rye and there he nurses his loneliness and is haunted by all the consequences his need to maintain a protected space in which to live and write has generated all through his life. He's in his fifties and he's very much aware of how he had to refuse the company of his ill sister, whom he adored, at some point, how he chose to stay away from his country and his family, how he felt to turn cold with a writer friend he had been very close to previously and becomes a bachelor with an unresolved sexuality, certainly close to homosexuality, living in a house with servants in the South of England and a daily visit of the stenographer to whom he dictates. Appalled by the Oscar Wilde case, the portrait of Henry is not one of someone who just represses his self and his sexuality but of something more complex and ambiguous, of somebody who copes with life exerting a control on how much he'd reveal, even to himself, and choosing to be a writer in order to achieve precisely that.

Literary significance & criticism

Colm Tóibín shows the complex ways in which an author like James, apparently excised from the content of his works, is deeply inscribed in them and offers a rich and insightful depiction of both the process of creative writing and the defense of a self. By letting us glance into the most intimate moments of Henry's mind, skillfully organised around the known biographical facts, we watch how they intertwine in a great writer at the turn of the century,

American writer John Updike described the book in "The New Yorker" (2004-06-28) by saying: “Tóibín's subject is the inward James, the master of literary creation and a vast hushed arena of dreams and memories and hoarded observations”.

Awards and nominations

The Master was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize. It received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006, the Lambda Literary Award, Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year award and, in France, "Le prix du Meilleur livre étranger" in 2005.

External links

* [http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/the_master/ Links to multiple reviews of The Master by Colm Tóibín] These do not include Paula Marantz Cohen's enthusiastic review in the "Times Literary Supplement", 19 March 2004 page 19.