"A meditative probe into the language of ordinary days."
–
The New York Times About the work of Colm Tóibín:
The Magician "Tóibín's novels typically depict an unfinished battle between those who know what they feel and those who don't, between those who have found a taut peace within themselves and those who remain unsettled."
–D. T. Max,
The New Yorker "
The Magician recaptures a literary giant. . . . Symphonic and moving . . . Maximalist in scope but intimate in feeling."
–Dwight Garner,
The New York Times The Master "Tóibín's work displays the kind of depth and sensitivity that few authors can offer. . . . The result is a beautiful, haunting portrayal."
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The Christian Science Monitor "A quiet tour de force: a work of deep seriousness and sympathy that gives us a genius in his full human dimensions. . . . [This] profound novel is–dare one say it?–masterly."
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The New York Observer Brooklyn "Tóibín . . . [is] his generation's most gifted writer of love's complicated, contradictory power."
–Floyd Skloot,
The Los Angeles Times "Reading Tóibín is like watching an artist paint one small stroke after another until suddenly the finished picture emerges to shattering effect. . . .
Brooklyn stands comparison with Henry James's
The Portrait of a Lady."
–
The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Nora Webster "A high-wire act of an eighth novel . . . Tóibín's radical restraint elevates what might have been a familiar tale of grief and survival into a realm of heightened inquiry. The result is a luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical."
–Jennifer Egan,
The New York Times Book Review
