The empty family

On the heels of his bestselling and award-winning novel Brooklyn, Colm Toibin returns with a stunning collection of stories--now available in paperback--"a book that's both a perfect introduction to Toibin and, for longtime fans, a bracing pleasure" ( The Seattle Times ). Critics praised Brooklyn as a "beautifully rendered portrait of Brooklyn and provincial Ireland in the 1950s." In The Empty Family, Toibin has extended his imagination further, offering an incredible range of periods and characters--people linked by love, loneliness, desire--"the unvarying dilemmas of the human heart" ( The Observer, UK). In the breathtaking long story "The Street," Toibin imagines a relationship between Pakistani workers in Barcelona--a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence. In "Two Women," an eminent and taciturn Irish set designer takes a job in her homeland and must confront emotions she has long repressed. "Silence" is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory,