Book Review
A Guest at the Feast
by Colm Toibin
‘It all started with my balls.’ So opens Colm Tóibín’s latest: a collection of essays that are personal, political and poetic. Separated into three sections, part one of this collection is biographical in nature, with the first essay – concerning the aforementioned balls – detailing Tóibín’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. The titular essay, ‘A Guest at the Feast’, is by far the longest in the collection. Originally published as a Penguin Short in 2011, it provides a miniature autobiography of the author as he details his childhood in Enniscorthy, his coming of age in Dublin, and the literary legacy of his family. It’s lyrical, rambling, and required reading. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a man I have repeatedly referred to as Ireland’s greatest living author.
Part two of the collection concerns the political. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say the ecclesiastical. Or both really. It should come as no surprise that a queer Irish writer in his 60s would be intimately concerned with the workings of the Catholic Church. Over the course of three essays, Tóibín profiles the last three popes – painting complex and troubling portraits of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.
The final section concerns another one of Tóibín’s great interests: literature. Specifically, he writes with a loving yet critical eye on the life and works of Marilynne Robinson (who shares Tóibín’s fascination with religion but not his critique), Francis Stuart (who shares Tóibín’s love of Ireland but not his political views), and John McGahern (who shares Tóibín’s diagnosis of cancer). Finally, the collection ends with an account of Tóibín’s time in an eerily empty Venice at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
If you’re anything like me, you don’t need to be sold on Tóibín’s work. If you do need some convincing, A Guest at the Feast, told with Tóibín’s signature humour, erudition, compassion, and acute observation, will do the trick.
