The Master Paperback - 2005

Excerpt

Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead–familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up. Now as he woke, it was, he imagined, an hour or more before the dawn; there would be no sound or movement for several hours. He touched the muscles on his neck which had become stiff; to his fingers they seemed unyielding and solid but not painful. As he moved his head, he could hear the muscles creaking. I am like an old door, he said to himself.
It was imperative, he knew, that he go back to sleep. He could not lie awake during these hours. He wanted to sleep, enter a lovely blackness, a dark, but not too dark, resting place, unhaunted, unpeopled, with no flickering presences.

When he woke again, he was agitated and unsure where he was. He often woke like this, disturbed, only half remembering the dream and desperate for the day to begin. Sometimes when he dozed, he would bask in the hazy, soft light of Bellosguardo in the early spring, the distances all misty, feeling the sheer pleasure of sunlight on his face, sitting in a chair, close to the wall of the old house with the smell of wisteria and early roses and jasmine. He would hope when he woke that the day would be like the dream, that traces of the ease and the color and the light would linger at the edge of things until night fell again.

But this dream was different. It was dark or darkening somewhere, it was a city, an old place in Italy like Orvieto or Siena, but nowhere exact, a dream-city with narrow streets, and he was hurrying; he was uncertain now whether he was alone or with somebody, but he was hurrying and there were students walking slowly up the hill too, past lighted shops and cafés and restaurants, and he was eager to get by them, finding ways to pass them. No matter how hard he tried to remember, he was still not sure if he had a companion; perhaps he did, or perhaps it was merely someone who walked behind him. He could not recall much about this shadowy, intermittent presence, but for some of the time there seemed to be a person or a voice close to him who understood better than he did the urgency, the need to hurry, and who insisted under his breath in mutterings and mumbles, cajoled him to walk faster, edge the students out of his path.
Why did he dream this? At each long and dimly lit entrance to a square, he recalled, he was tempted to leave the bustling street, but he was urged to carry on. Was his ghostly companion telling him to carry on? Finally, he walked slowly into a vast Italian space, with towers and castellated roofs, and a sky the color of dark blue ink, smooth and consistent. He stood there and watched as though it were framed, taking in the symmetry and texture.

Media reviews

“Colm Tóibín takes us almost shockingly close to the soul of Henry James and, by extension, to the mystery of art itself. It is a remarkable, utterly original book.”
–Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours

“A must read. Colm Tóibín has not only written a spectacular novel, he has found a way to pay tribute to Henry James. We should all be so gifted and so lucky.”
–Alice Sebold

“A triumph.… Breathtaking.… Beautifully shaped and written, it is the best work of a very gifted writer.”
–National Post

“[Tóibín] is being hailed as a genius.… A piece of virtuoso writing.”
–Globe and Mail

“An audacious, profound, and wonderfully intelligent book.”
–The Guardian

“Artful, moving and very beautiful.…”
— New York Times Book Review

“Impressive and moving.… The Master is a lovely portrait of the artist, rich in fictional truth.”
–Times Literary Supplement

“Colm Tóibín leads us into the mind of Henry James with a power and nuanced persuasiveness that finally begin to seem miraculous.… Beautiful and perceptive.…”
–Cynthia Ozick

“A sympathetic and triumphant novel.”
–The Observer (U.K.)

“A deep, lovely, and enthralling book that engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life: splendidly conceived and composed by a writer who is himself a master of his art.”
–Shirley Hazzard

“[Colm Tóibín is] greatly gifted.… A marvel.…”
–John Updike, The New Yorker

“Enthralling.… Tóibín displays – in a manner that is masterly – the wit and metaphorical flair, psychological subtlety and phrases of pouncing incisiveness with which a great novelist captured the nuances of consciousness and the duplicities of society.”
–Sunday Times (U.K.)

“This is a taut, well-crafted, mesmerising novel.… A masterly achievement.”
–The Independent (U.K.)

“The Master reflects all the brilliance and challenge of Henry James’s work, sweeping through the author’s life and mind with a scope that’s both broad and precise.… A beautiful, haunting portrayal that measures the amplitude of silence and the trajectory of a glance in the life of one of the world’s most astute social observers.”
–Christian Science Monitor

“Convincing and enthralling. . . . Colm Tóibín has written a superb novel about a great artist.…”
-Washington Post

“Tóibín takes James’s mind and life as a subject, but for a novel that is all his own.… Brilliant and imaginative.…”
–The New York Review of Books

“Henry James, the greatest observer we have, is now made to observe himself in this meditation that is, oddly, both Olympian and troubled. Colm Tóibín has a perfect understanding of the greatest of all American writers and accompanies him to Rome, Newport, Paris, Florence, the London of Oscar Wilde. Nothing about this book, however, feels piecemeal or improvised; it is a sustained performance worthy of the Master.”
–Edmund White

“A superlative book.… Read this compelling, restrained book by a still young master.”
–The Scotsman

“A novel of beautifully realized interludes woven with the sinew of memory.”
–Toronto StarGlobe and Mail (profile)

“Ambitious and gracefully plotted.… Ingenious and thoughtful.…”
–New Statesman

“This marvellously intelligent and engaging novel presents not on a silver platter but in tender, opened hands a beautifully nuanced psychological portrait.”
–Booklist (starred review)


From the Hardcover edition.