The Empty Family Stories

Short stories

Paperback (30 Jun 2011)

Save $0.71

  • RRP $13.09
  • $12.38
Add to basket

Includes delivery to the United States

10+ copies available online - Usually dispatched within two working days

Publisher's Synopsis

In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family Colm Tóibìn delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history.

'I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.'

From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Tóibìn's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.

'Exquisite . . . The chief reason to read these stories is the peculiar power of Colm Tóibìn's prose' Telegraph

'Astonishingly precise, depicting complex and conflicted states of mind with rare clarity' Observer

'Beautifully observed' Sunday Times

Book information

ISBN: 9780141041773
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint: Penguin Books
Pub date:
Edition: Short stories
DEWEY: 823.92
DEWEY edition: 22
Language: English
Number of pages: 214
Weight: 164g
Height: 194mm
Width: 128mm
Spine width: 15mm