Colm Tóibín on Crafting a Collection of Irish Homecoming

“It’s a complex business, going home,” says Colm Tóibín, the bard of the Irish diaspora, noted for eleven novels, including the iconic 1950s-era immigrant saga Brooklyn and its sequel, Long Island, which connect his own hometown of Enniscorthy with the immigrant population in the States. Reading Tóibín draws me back to my own roots, imagining my paternal great grandmother traveling by ship from Cork to Galveston, and stepping onto this massive continent. His masterful short stories revolve around distinctive characters with profound empathy and acute detail. His stories pull us away from the chaotic now of contemporary life and remind us what endures—love, grief, family connections. I read his third collection, The News from Dublin, during a perfectly timed power outage, absorbing the stories by candlelight, surrounded by darkness, with no diversions, simply caught up in the power of his storytelling.