A Guest at the Feast: Essays

Summary

From one of the greatest writers of our time comes a collection of brilliant essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change and about cancer, priests, popes, and homosexuality. It is a glorious tribute to the art of writing.

Colm Tóibín opens this stunning collection with a supremely compelling essay, laced with humor about his (successful) treatment for cancer, which begins: “It all started with my balls.”

Part two is an autobiographical essay about growing up in the small town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, the setting for many of his novels and stories, including Brooklyn, The Blackwater Lightship, and Nora Webster. Tóibín writes about the priests who educated him, several of whom were condemned years later for abuse in the greatest scandal ever to befall the Catholic Church in Ireland. He writes about Irish history and literature and about homosexuality—including his personal experience, that of his predecessors and contemporaries, and the long, tragic journey toward legal and social acceptance.

In part three, Tóibín introduces complex portraits of three popes—John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.

In part four he writes about a trio of authors who reckon with religion. The final essay, “Alone in Venice,” beautifully recounts his trip to that incomparable city (where he has set some of his most dazzling scenes) at the height of the pandemic, when the streets and canals and churches and museums were empty.

A Guest at the Feast is a glorious celebration of a life devoted to art.