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Gentle, stoical, visceral pain leaches from every page, into my fingers, till my very blood is charged with it. This tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.more This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes, in Toibin’s searing evocation, a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the Cross until her son died-she fled, to save herself), and is equally harsh on her judgment of others. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God nor that his death was “worth it ” nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,” were holy disciples. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel-her keepers, who provide her with food and shelter and visit her regularly. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Provocative, haunting, and indelible, Colm Tóibín’s portrait of Mary presents her as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. By doing so he gives us a Mary to identify with rather than venerate.Provocative, haunting, and indelible, Colm Tóibín’s portrait of Mary presents her as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. With deceptively modest prose, Tóibín presents the Virgin Mary's story as one of human loss rather than salvation. TLSįearsomely strange, deeply thoughtful Guardian Toibin has created an impressive work of religious imagination.haunting, highly original. After a lifetime listening to everyone else's versions of that life, she is angry and frustrated because they are all questionable. This novel is the Virgin's version of the life of Christ. Although it has some insightful things to say about religion and the period - the descriptions of the Crucifixion are visceral - it has a universal message about the nature of loss. There is a profound ache throughout this little character study, a steely determination coupled with an unbearable loss. This is a flawless work, touching, moving and terrifying. And Tóibín is a wonderful writer: as ever, his lyrical and moving prose is the real miracle. Tóibín's weary Mary, sceptical and grudging, reads as far more true and real than the saintly perpetual virgin of legend.
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' A beautiful and daring takes its power from the surprise of its language, its almost shocking characterization' Mary Gordon, New York Timesīeguiling and deeply intelligent.In a single passage - and in a rendition, furthermore, of one of the most famous passages of western literature - Tóibín shows how the telling and the details are all-important. 'Depicting the harrowing losses and evasions that can go on between mothers and sons.Tóibín creates a reversed Pièta: he holds the mother in his arms' Independent It is as tragic as a Spanish pieta, but it is completely heretical.Tóibín maintains all the dignity of Mary without subscribing to the myths that have accumulated around her' Edmund White, Irish Times 'This is a short book, but it is as dense as a diamond. In her effort to tell the truth in all its gnarled complexity, she slowly emerges as a figure of immense moral stature as well as a woman from history rendered now as fully human. To her he was a vulnerable figure, surrounded by men who could not be trusted, living in a time of turmoil and change.Īs her life and her suffering begin to acquire the resonance of myth, Mary struggles to break the silence surrounding what she knows to have happened. For Mary, her son has been lost to the world, and now, living in exile and in fear, she tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to her son's brutal death. SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013Ĭolm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary is the moving story of the Virgin Mary, told by a novelist famous for writing brilliantly about the family.įrom the author of Brooklyn, in a voice that is both tender and filled with rage, The Testament of Mary tells the story of a cataclysmic event which led to an overpowering grief.