The Master [Hardcover]

Reynolds Price author of "Kate Vaiden" With the uncanny power of a bright light shone through a broad strong hand, Colm Tiibin illumines the life and work of Henry James. I can think of no other fictional portrait of a great writer -- and the writer's whole distinguished family -- which is steadily compelling as an eloquent story and is also a genuine contribution to literary understanding.

In its quiet way, this novel's imaginative truthfulness crosses boundaries and challenges biographers.

Exquisitely crafted and full on finely nuanced psychological observation. It is profoundly moving.

Hastings creates a compelling picture of the end of the Third Reich. Armageddon is a triumph, raw and powerful.

'Unerring poignancy… Tóibín writes with an undemonstrative precision perfectly suited to its subject' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

'Tóibín deftly mingles conjecture with fact as he explores a fascinating family background… intriguing' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

It is January 1895 and Henry James's play Guy Domville, from which he hoped to make a fortune, has failed on the London stage. The Master opens with this disaster and takes James through the next five years, as having found his dream retreat, he moves to Rye in Sussex. It is there he writes his short masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw, in which he used much of his own life as an exile in England and a member of one of the great eccentric American families. He is impelled by the need to work and haunted by sections of his own past, including his own failure to fight in the American Civil War, the golden summer of 1865, and the death of his sister Alice. He is watchful and witty, relishing the England in which he has come to live and regretting the New England he has left.

In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost. In The Master Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Colm Toibin was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of four novels, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross, and Love in a Dark Time. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He lives in Dublin.