Mixed feelings about this one. I really loved 70% of it, but even if I can see what Colm Toibin wanted to do with the end, I cant accept how it was put into scene. The novel has the quality of being quite unpredictable. Almost half of the novel I didnt know where it wants to go, but still the end was too much. I can make excuses about it, I want to pretend that the journey remains beautiful, but no. I HATED THE END. The more I think about it, I cant accept it. So I'm going to stop here.

“I wanted them to know that I was all right now, after years of not being all right…”This is the third of Colm Tóibín's novels that I have read. I have already purchased another and added it to my “to read” pile. I can’t really articulate why he is so good, except to say that his brilliant use of small detail and the everyday bits and pieces of life just builds and builds until you are caught up in a reality that completely envelopes you. It captures you because the emotions are so real, honest,...

Colm Toibin is much-loved and I must say that I admire the breadth of vision, Ireland to Brooklyn to Argentina to Scientology to an alternate to the Gospels. "The Story of the Night" reads, to me, like a sequence of four themes featuring the same narrator, a gay Argentine of the seventies and eighties. The first segment is a youth reminiscent of Borges, not in writing but in the household reverence for English despite living in Latin America; the narrator's mother was British. Family business di...

"I still believe that they [American Diplomats] were involved in every cent which the United Statesput into...the [Argentine] election," thinks Richard, the narrator of the story set in 1996. But they pay him big bucks to take some risk, and he is pretty much aimless and drifting. But Richard has taken another risk: he is gay and has had unprotected sex for years. Will the Argentine government bring him down? Will Aids? Will both? Or will he get away with everything? Good stuff, good enough for

rating: 5.5/5 My initial reaction: "Brilliant, emotional, and will leave you, well, utterly speechless. Just... WOW!"As Argentina is going through political upheaval, so is Richard. Strangled by his job and lack of love life, he takes risks and grows just like this new Argentina does. He finds himself in a new career and in a new love.The melancholy, trance-like prose beautifully illustrates how Richard drifts through life being a part of it yet apart at the same time. He is lonely and detached

It was interesting that this story was set in South America as opposed to Ireland which I know is where most of Tóibín's novels are set. Even though I didn't have any knowledge on the historical events that occurred throughout the time of the story, I didn't in any way feel like I was losing track of the story. Tóibín keeps you up to date!One of the things I appreciate most about this book is the characterization. It is not easy to write intelligent and introverted characters such as Richard, no...

In a way this book felt like it began in the second half. The first half is mostly the narrator recounting his childhood and describing Argentina's political and economic state in the 80s, which was somewhat dull.What was most interesting about this book, is how well Tóibín writes of queer sexual "code of conduct" in societies that are repressive towards queer individuals (certainly not exclusive to these places). A language in which gestures and silences are more important and informing than wo...

A dismal cover, murkier than the one I selected here, the image darker and even more obscure. This appears to be Toibin's third novel, published in 1996. I only just stumbled upon it.Richard is born in Argentina; his mother was British and his father Argentinian. Richard is between worlds, speaking English and Spanish; he is also gay. He is at the same time an insider and an outsider. His life in Buenos Aires is both surface and depth; he is seen in a suit and tie and he contains secrets.Not unt...

Colm Toibin is a very reliable novelist when it is good, immersive novels that you are after. His streams of consciousness are always calm and steady (unlike the unhinged literary experiments all too common in contemporary novels), delicately balancing the inner and outer lives of his characters. This is the first novel of his I'm reading that is about a gay man, and I wish he'd write more of such books. I came to know about the Falklands war while reading David Mithcell's Black Swan Green recen...

Colm Toibin is one of my favorite Irish authors writing today. Among his books that I've read to date ("The South", "The Heather Blazing", "The Blackwater Lightship", "Mothers and Sons" and this one - I haven't read "The Master" yet), "The Story of the Night" is my favorite.Set in Buenos Aires during the Falklands war and its aftermath, the novel tracks the development of Richard Garay, a gay schoolteacher, the son of an Argentine father and English mother. At the novel's opening, the generals a...

Never in my life have I felt so attacked by a book like when I read "The Story of the Night". This book hit home way too close. You know how books - as many other things - come into your life in certain moments and in certain situations that just make you believe there's something out there that actually watches over you? Well, me runing into this novel by Colm Tóibín was an experience like the one I just mentioned. One wouldn't need to know, but I started reading this as a way to get off my min...

Toibin's third novel was his first openly 'gay' novel and I wonder how much he felt compelled to tackle the subject of AIDS. It was published in 1996 so maybe there was a sense of obligation on his part. Reading it in 2006, I couldn't help sighing a little with a sense of deja vu when the topic reared its head at the end of the book - which is, admittedly, an unfair reaction.The novel blends confession, love story and the sort of ambassadorial intrigue that Graham Greene went in for. In fact, I

This book started strongly- the protagonist's relationship with his mother was explored with sensitivity and depth and I found it intriguing. But Toibin passes over this quickly, intending to produce something epic, a novel covering the whole of the Argentinian 1980s, nodding a hat at the age of dictators and the disappearances, the Falklands War, the selling-off of the oil fields, and- because this is a GAY novel- AIDS, of course. Because-sigh- writing a gay novel without AIDS would be the same...

A Timelessly Important Yet Also A Timely Novel2005 and Argentina has just revoked amnesty for those responsible for the brutality and occult treachery of the Dirty War that ended with the overthrow of the military junta with the British defeat of Argentina's forces over the Falkland Islands. And it is during this closure of a long suppressed circle that Colm Toibin's superb 1995 book THE STORY OF THE NIGHT comes back into circulation. By all means read this book now not only to celebrate Toibin'...