The Literature Network - The portrait of a writer David Robson enjoys this novelistic homage to Henry James, even if it lacks James's artistry

The portrait of a writer David Robson enjoys this novelistic homage to Henry James, even if it lacks James's artistry

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20040321
Author:David Robson

The Master

by Colm Toibin

Picador, pounds 15.99, 368 pp

pounds 13.99 ( pounds 2.25 p&p) 0870 155 7222

COLM TOIBIN 's novel of homage to Henry James opens in January 1895. The great man is wracked with anxiety. His first play, Guy Domville, is about to open in London and he is apprehensive - rightly - about its prospects. As his own play flops, the fact that The Ideal Husband - "feeble and vulgar", thinks James - is earning extravagant plaudits for Oscar Wilde - "loud and large and Irish" - only deepens his gloom.

It is an intriguing starting-point and the reason for it soon becomes clear. ...

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