The Heather Blazing: A Novel

by Colm Tóibín

Overview

Colm Tóibín’s “lovely, understated” novel that “proceeds with stately grace” (The Washington Post Book World) about an uncompromising judge whose principles, when brought home to his own family, are tragic.

Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships—with his father, his first “girl,” his wife, and the children who barely know him—and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power, “seductive and absorbing” (USA Today).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476704500
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	10/30/2012
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	248
Sales rank:	187,367
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah’s Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.

Editorial Reviews

[A] stunning Irish novel, which seems to derive its clear and affecting style in part from the staunch personality of its protagonist…and in part from the chilly beauty of the south-east coast of Ireland.”—The New Yorker

“The more one thinks about this clear-headed yet intense book, the stronger the impression it leaves.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“The Heather Blazing makes a breathtaking leap into the realm of Joyce’s Dubliners.”—Mirabella

“There are…a handful of writers who manage to combine our time’s awareness of the boot tracks families leave on their members’ psyches with a direct and uncomplicated experience of those wounded lives. They are masters, and there are precious few of them…To nominate someone for that august company, Colm Tóibín seems an unavoidable candidate.”—Geoffrey Stokes, The Boston Globe

"This lovely, understated novel proceeds with stately grace."—Alice McDermott, The Washington Post Book World

“Beautifully written…Tóibín weaves past and present together in a way designed to extract maximum resonance…One of the book’s surprises is its subtle humor, its awareness of small ironies.”—Voice Literary Supplement

“The novel is narrated dispassionately and with deceptive simplicity, moving between the public figure of the judge in his study and the terrible deaths of childhood…It is impossible to read Tóibín without being moved, touched and finally changed.”—Linda Grant, Independent on Sunday

“The quiet but relentless force of Tóibín’s prose, its honed honesty and extraordinary shading of color and mood, animates his stories…There are breathtaking moments, episodes of glassing clarity and trueness to the deepest chords of emotional and spiritual life.”—Vince Passaro, New York Newsday

From the Publisher

Irish novelist Toibin here follows up his Irish Times /Aer Lingus Irish Literature Award-winning first book, The South , with another extended study in paralysis--not the physical kind, but rather the willed emotional stasis that James Joyce, in a famous formulation, contended gripped the Irish soul. The hero here is Eamon Redmond, a High Court judge in Dublin who is readying for retirement. He and his wife, Carmel, are thinking of moving permanently to the south coast, near Enniscorthy, a place filled with childhood memories for them both. As they contemplate the joys of their autumn years, strains in their relations emerge: their unwed daughter announces she is pregnant; Eamon writes an unpopular opinion in a civil rights case; and Carmine accuses Eamon of always having been distant (``You sound bored. It is one of the things that you have learned to do over the years''). Toibin's acclaimed prose style--measured and restrained as a Victorian memoir yet poetic in precision--makes a character of the brooding, enigmatic Irish weather and gives voice to the darker side of the Irish character. As in Joyce's stories in Dubliners , the proceedings lead to an epiphany of sorts, as Eamon finds himself doting on his grandson at the shore. A small advance in the moral education of Eamon Redmond, yes; but under Toibin's generous, forgiving gaze, the moment rings profound. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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.

Library Journal

Colm Toibin's second novel has myriad echoes—those relating to Irish history and those within the life of protagonist Eamon Redmond. In keeping with Redmond's emotional distance, narrator Tim Reynolds underplays the quiet drama and mostly relies on the text to tell us who is speaking. His vocal characterizations are subtle but sufficient. The most evocative writing is about the landscape, seascape, and weather, and Reynolds draws us into those. The descriptions of the Irish coast are reminiscent of those in John Banville’s THE SEA. This is a fine reading of a fine book. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2013 - AudioFile

Colm Toibin's second novel has myriad echoes—those relating to Irish history and those within the life of protagonist Eamon Redmond. In keeping with Redmond's emotional distance, narrator Tim Reynolds underplays the quiet drama and mostly relies on the text to tell us who is speaking. His vocal characterizations are subtle but sufficient. The most evocative writing is about the landscape, seascape, and weather, and Reynolds draws us into those. The descriptions of the Irish coast are reminiscent of those in John Banville’s THE SEA. This is a fine reading of a fine book. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2013 - AudioFile