http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/50868618

Mothers and sons

Toibin's stated aim is to focus "on a moment in which an unspoken balance shifts" between mothers and sons. The whole collection looks at the mother-son dynamic not as connection but as severance. In The Use of Reason the central character is a criminal. Toibin unfurls the inevitability of his trajectory via abusive Catholic correctional institution, the death of his younger brother and the indifference of his alcoholic mother. A Song continues the theme of detachment caused by abandonment. A mother sings in a pub of unrequited love and betrayal, all the while staring at the son she left years before. In The Name of the Game, Nancy struggles to save her family after her husband dies penniless. In Famous Blue Raincoat Lisa relives the death of her sister years before, when her son Luke unearths the records the sisters had made together. A Priest in the Family amplifies the theme of abuse from the perspective of a mother. Three Friends deals with the death of a young man's mother. A Summer Job is a wonderful three-way plait about the changing relationship between a mother, her son and her mother, charting the way love transmutes into need and how need changes hands. In A Long Winter, a mother accused by her husband of alcoholism walks out. There is a terrible winter storm and she is feared lost in the mountains. After attempted searches, father and son realise they will have to await the thaw before they can locate her and that they will have to beat the vultures to her body.

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