A mother crosses Ireland to tell her son's widow he has died; a man travels to Dublin to plead for his dying brother. Colm Tóibín's nine stories follow grief onto the road.
Readical Key Points
- Nine stories, three of them previously unpublished; others first appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere
- Set in Ireland, Spain and the United States
- Includes "The Journey to Galway," "Sleep" and the title story
- Reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and Booklist
- Hardcover, 304 pages, Scribner, 2026
In the title story, Maurice Webster travels from Enniscorthy to ask the health minister for a tuberculosis drug still in testing, the only hope for his younger brother. In "Sleep," two lovers part because one of them cannot face his grief after his own brother's death. Elsewhere the collection turns to estrangement from family, the hold of the past, and love that sits awkwardly with circumstance.
It is for readers of Tóibín's novels, among them Brooklyn and Long Island, and for readers of quiet, closely observed short fiction. Most of these journeys are short on the map and very long in every other way.
About the Author
Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Brooklyn (Costa Book Award), The Master (Los Angeles Times Book Prize), Nora Webster (Hawthornden Prize), The Magician (Rathbones Folio Prize) and Long Island, an Oprah's Book Club pick. He served as Laureate for Irish Fiction from 2022 to 2024 and received the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2021.
Condition: Brand New and Readical Ready.
Readical™ is an independent bookstore and reading-products brand built around a simple idea: books matter most when what we learn leaves the page and enters our lives.
Apply the Page. Get Readical™.
