Product Description

A daring and deeply moving novel set in Argentina in the time of the Generals--a time when the streets are empty at night, and people have trained themselves not to see. Richard Garay lives with his mother, hiding his sexuality from her and from society. Stifled by his job, Richard is willing to take chances, both sexually and professionally. But Argentina is changing, and as his country edges toward peace, Richard tentatively begins a love affair. The result is a powerful, brave, and poignant novel of sex, death, and the diffculties of connecting one's inner life with the outside world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #460736 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
In the past decade Colm Tóibín has garnered international fame for his fiction, reporting, and travel writing. Now, in his new novel, The Story of Night, he breaks new emotional ground with the story of a gay man coming of age in Argentina during the Falklands War. Tóibín weds his two themes--the ongoing Argentinean struggle toward democracy and the personal journey of a man coming out--with intellectual deftness and literary agility. Written with grace and understatement The Story of Night is Tóibín's best work yet.

From Library Journal
Toibin (The Heather Blazing, LJ 2/1/93) lives in Ireland, but his newest novel successfully re-creates the turmoil and confusion of the postmilitary regime in Argentina in the early 1980s as if he had been witness. Richard Garay is an Argentinean, bored by his job as an English tutor and frustrated by his hidden homosexuality. His fluency with language attracts the attention of Claudio Canetto, who hires him as a liaison to foreign investors in his campaign for president of Argentina. Though the campaing is unsuccessful, it draws Garay into an uneasy alliance with a pair of powerful Americans who hope to influence the next election. Toibin flirts with the exploration of a tainted political process, but the heart of the book details the secret relationship between Garay and Canetto's son Pablo; as the country recovers from the Falklands War and the oppression of military leadership, their pairing grows from lust to love as the new threat of AIDS looms. Toibin's simple but eloquent telling of this personal story is sometimes explicit, often moving, and always vivid in its portrayal of Argentina and its people. Highly recommended.?Marc A. Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., Indiana, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The Washington Post
A fine novel, remarkable for the purity of its ambitions.

Customer Reviews

Disappointed persistence
Even though I read the whole book, the main character's homosexuality did not interest me at all. I was hoping that it would be relevant to the story. I was thinking that Donald and his wife would try to use this feature of his character to achieve something through him for the US State Dept; but it turned out as far as I could determine that the American characters were not needed for the story. In other words, if there had been an aspect of intrigue in the story due to his homosexuality, I would have found it interesting and perhaps well written.

Well developed characters in an unusual time and setting
I just finished the book and in general enjoyed it. The setting of Argentina during the Falklands war was a unique setting for a gay themed novel. I thought the characters were well developed and they evolved in ways that I was not expecting. The basic tale held my interest and toward the end it caught me my surprise. But, I do have to say the ending was a bit of a disappointment and rather left me hanging in the middle of a very dramatic situation. Nonetheless it is in the upper 10 percent of gay novels that I have read and I think that is high praise. I think few will be disappointed.

An evocative story, told with extraordinary sensitivity.
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 are still in power, and Garay is closeted and emotionally stunted. Toibin, who covered the trial of General Gualtieri as a reporter, is extraordinarily effective in conveying the sense of menace that prevails, and the way people are forced to hold their emotions in check in order to survive.

The Falklands are lost, the generals lose their hold on power, and the story traces Richard's gradual emotional development in parallel with the opening of Argentine society. The aspect of Toibin's writing that I like best is his extraordinary emotional intelligence, which he deploys here to full effect, in a sensitive and moving account of Richard's story. Richard is a complex, and not entirely sympathetic, character, but Toibin draws us in to his story, and makes us care deeply about his fate.

An evocative and moving story, which I highly recommend.