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A work suffused with mystery and wonder." " builds to a provocative climax, one that is as spiritually profound as its prose is plainspoken. . . . poignant reimagining of the last days of Christ. Reading this perfect little novella is like watching someone light a candle inside a lantern.Ī stunning interpretation that is as beautiful in its presentation as it is provocative in its intention. It was not worth it.’Ī flawless work, touching, moving and terrifying. ‘I can tell you now, when you say he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. Although it has some insightful things to say about religion and the period-the descriptions of the Crucifixion are visceral-it has a universal message about the nature of loss. There is a profound ache throughout this little character study, a steely determination coupled with an unbearable loss. And Tóibín is a wonderful writer: as ever, his lyrical and moving prose is the real miracle." " The Testament of Mary is an important and persuasive book: Tóibín’s weary Mary, sceptical and grudging, reads as far more true and real than the saintly perpetual virgin of legend. Nowhere in this beguiling and deeply intelligent, moving work is Mary’s attention to detail more instrumental (and more like a novelist’s) than in her account of her son’s death. fearsomely strange, deeply thoughtful book. Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary retells the gospel story from the perspective of Jesus’s mother with sympathy and imagination." Tóibín suffuses the story with a sense of mystery and makes the reader feel (perhaps as never before) the tragedy of the Crucifixion. There’s an ars poetica in Mary’s stubbornness and refusal to tell her story neatly." "You don’t have to be a Roman Catholic to respond, at a deep level, to. Anthony Domestico, San Francisco Chronicle We continue to tell stories because that’s all we can do. Despite it unorthodoxies, The Testament of Mary is a very simple-one might say classical-tale, showing how violence, even redemptive violence, frustrates our attempts to make sense of it. in a voice that is so restrained, so understated and clear, that it renders the pain that much more painful. . . . Tóibín treats Mary utterly seriously but not reverently. Her religious life, told in some of the book’s most glowing passages, centers on memories of silent Jewish Sabbaths. . . . In Colm Tóibín’s spare, quiet novel, Mary herself isn’t a follower of Jesus. zeros in on grief over losing her son, rendering them both uncharacteristically human. Now the masterful Irish writer Colm Tóibín puts a jackhammer to the cozy, safe, Christmas-card version in The Testament of Mary."
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"Mary-silent, obedient, observant-has echoed down two millennia, cementing a potent ideal in the Western imagination. Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books Imagining himself into Mary’s interior life is his boldest jump yet. Tóibín applies a Joycean ruthlessness. . . . Tóibín gives a familiar story startling intimacy. Tóibín’s tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.Įxquisite . . . This woman whom we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the cross until her son died-she fled, to save herself), and her judgment of others is equally harsh. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God nor that his death was “worth it” nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,” were holy disciples. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel, who are her keepers. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son’s crucifixion. “Tóibín is at his lyrical best in this beautiful and daring work” ( The New York Times Book Review) that portrays Mary as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity-shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.