A Guest at the Feast

Colm Tóibín's essay collection opens with a cancer diagnosis and its treatment, told with humor. He survives, but he now lives in what he calls "the age of one ball." It is a frank start to eleven essays on illness, faith, sexuality and writing.

The second essay is a memoir of the 1950s and '60s in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, the small town behind his novels and stories, among them Brooklyn, The Blackwater Lightship and Nora Webster. Priests taught him there, and several were condemned years afterward for abuse.

He also writes on Irish history and literature, and on the slow, painful road toward legal and social acceptance of homosexuality in Ireland, a country changing fast around him.

Part Two profiles three popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. Part Three turns to three authors who deal with religion in their fiction.

The last essay, "Alone in Venice," follows Tóibín to the city at the height of the pandemic. Its streets, canals, churches and museums stand empty, and he has them to himself, an experience both haunting and exhilarating. The collection mixes memoir, profile and literary criticism.