A poignant and reflective novel in which Toibin portrays the novelist Henry James during a period of profound melancholy and deep self-examination. A serious and substantial read, during which I often wondered whether I was reading fact or fiction.
Extract
The feeling of power was new to him. This raid on his own memories, this parading of an object so close to him, so deeply part of his own personal store that no one might ever know where this moment in his story came from, made him believe that he had done something daring and original.
Parallels
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
