BOOK REVIEW: The News From Dublin by Colm Tóibín

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

I don’t read many short story collections (which is what I say whenever I review a short story collection.) However, I’m addicted to Colm Tóibín, so when I saw this collection on Netgalley, The News From Dublin, I had to request it.

Everything Tóibín writes is extraordinary, with deep dives into the characters’ psyches and beautiful prose. There are nine stories in the collection, set in different time periods and different countries. Like all short stories, there are no happy endings and they are much more character driven than plot driven. Tóibín is able to make even unsympathetic characters compelling (The Free Man). I highly recommend the book for the first 8 stories.

The only one that didn’t captivate me was the final story, The Catalan Girls, about a family of Catalan sisters who emigrate to Argentina to make new lives for themselves. They were not close. In fact, they didn’t like one another and their mother only cared for one of them–not the protagonist. That story seemed to drag, maybe in part because it was novella length rather than short story length, but maybe the wandering through life was the point.

Short story fans should not miss The News From Dublin.