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New Ways to Kill Your Mother

New Ways to Kill Your Mother

Writers and Their Families

Summary

From Colm Tóibín comes New Ways to Kill Your Mother, a fabulously entertaining book about writers and their families.

In this wonderfully entertaining and enlightening collection, Colm Tóibín not only explores the often tense relationship between writers and their families but also conveys, with a rare tenderness and wit, the great joy of reading their work. Here is W.B. Yeats harshly responding to his own father's literary efforts; Thomas Mann ruining his children's prospects; Tennessee Williams haunted by his sister's mental illness; and John Cheever being beastly to his wife.

Praise for New Ways to Kill Your Mother:

'A brilliant book...Tóibín is a supple, subtle thinker, alive to hints and undertones, wary of absolute truths' Robert Hanks, New Statesman

'A penetrating and often very funny inquiry into the fraught complicity between parent and child, brother and sister' Daily Telegraph

'Insightful and compassionate, assured and knowledgeable, never less than fascinating. An impressive, fine and engaging collection' Independent on Sunday

Reviews

  • A brilliant book...Tóibín is a supple, subtle thinker, alive to hints and undertones, wary of absolute truths.
    New Statesman

About the author

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of nine novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster and, most recently, House of Names. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, won the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. He lives in Dublin.
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