Book cover for Love in a Dark Time

Synopsis

Details

21 May 2010
288 pages
9780330491389
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

Tóibín treats his subject with confidence and authority, both of which attributes are only strengthened by his moderation of tone and the depth of his compassion. He writes with rare tenderness of figures as disparate as Elizabeth Bishop and Francis Bacon, Thomas Mann and Roger Casement, Thom Gunn and Pedro Almodóvar.
Such readings are crucial, for it is only when homosexuality is removed from the margins and placed at the very heart of the cultural canon that the world predicted by Tóibín in which “being gay will no longer involve difficulty and discrimination” will come to pass.
Tóibín writes with high-voltage restraint; his sentences are masterfully devoid of trickery . . . He is tuned in to the silent language of families, the messages that are unspoken and slip past the rest of the world, landing deep into the hearts of those who understand.