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The News from Dublin: The Smallest, Greatest Writing
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Book Review
Great writing is small, in my view. Sentences are short and build on a simple structure. Words do their work and nothing more—they don’t show off. Words give the reader only what they need to feel and visualize the story.
Great writers stay small. They illuminate the drama in the interactions, movements, and thoughts of everyday life. It doesn’t matter if they are writing about a woman walking her dog, a wedding, or a war. No matter how big the storyline is, great writers understand that small moments offer palpable tension and add up to important lives.
Colm Tóibín is a master. Whenever I read his work (not enough, I’m afraid) it is a master class. This is particularly true in The News from Dublin, his new collection of short stories.
Tóibín shines a spotlight on those small moments. The result is a gift to readers: the ability to feel what his characters feel as they navigate life. In The News from Dublin, these lives include a train ride to deliver tragic news; the halting path toward building a life after prison; and decades of little, but very painful, family interactions that define the arc of an entire life.
The story that left me in awe is A Free Man. The central character just got out of prison. He served a long prison term for a terrible crime. Tóibín doesn’t ask me to forgive. He does ask me to understand, something I didn’t think I could do.
One sentence that, among many, captures my awe. “He supposed he should ask himself if he were dreaming. Last night he had been locked in a cell. Now he was alone and free in a teeming city. Yesterday he had been watched and guarded. Now no one in the world knew where he was.” Reading this one sentence, I feel the abrupt juxtaposition this man’s life has become. I relate to the sense of disorientation he experiences just walking down the street. My disgust over his crimes never gets in the way of my empathy. That’s an incredible feat of storytelling.
This is a brief review. That’s because I am being efficient. I am staying small: Colm Tóibín is a great writer who always gives us great writing.
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