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The Heather Blazing - Reviews
Independent on Sunday
The novel is narrated dispassionately and with deceptive simplicity, moving
between the public figure of the the judge in his study and the terrible
deaths of childhood... It is impossible to read Tóibín without being moved,
touched and finally changed.
Library Journal
Scholarly, aloof Eamon Redmond became a judge in Dublin's high court at a
relatively young age after a lonely childhood. His meticulously constructed
judgments adhere so strictly to the letter of the law that room for appeal is
impossible. But what of compassion? Why do his wife and children turn their
backs on his decisions? This novel is more a character study than the action-
packed tale suggested by the title. The narrative leapfrogs from past to
present as Redmond, the motherless boy, plods along with his father, listening
to tales of earlier uprisings. His happiest times, as both man and boy, come
when he is swimming or walking along the southern Irish coast. When his wife
of many years dies and he is truly alone, solitude is no longer the prize he
once sought. Toibin ( The South , LJ 7/91) has a subtle way of ensnaring
the reader into Redmond's life. Recommended for serious fiction collections.
Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/92.-- Marion Hanscom, Binghamton Univ.
Lib., N.Y.
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Observer
Superbly accomplished, exquisitely crafted... a small triumph of intensity.
Sunday Times
Tóibín is one of the most promising novelists writing in the
English language. (Nick Horby)
Voice Literary Supplement
{The author} brings us patiently, generously, into the life of one man, Eamon
Redmond, showing how his country and its history have left their mark,
offering all the evidence but never didactically connecting the dots. . . .
Toibin has written a restrained, sympathetic novel about a man with a
mind more attuned to the nuances of the law than to the people around him.
{This} is a beautifully written book, the prose fluid and never flashy,
the structure perfectly suited to the story; Toibin weaves past and present
together in a way designed to extract the maximum resonance from the
juxtaposition. One of the book's surprises is its subtle humor, its
awareness of small ironies. (By From Laurie Muchnick )
Don DeLillo
About Tóibín: "never says too much and never lets us grow too comfortable."
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