''The South'' is a 1990 novel by

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

writer

Colm Tóibín Colm Tóibín (, approximately ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet. His first novel, '' The South'', was published in 1990. '' The Blackwater Lightship'' was shortlis ...

. The idea for ''The South'' came to Tóibín in 1982 whilst on a train from Dublin to his native town of

Enniscorthy Enniscorthy () is the second-largest town in County Wexford, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. At the 2016 census, the population of the town and environs was 11,381. The town is located on the picturesque River Slaney and in close proximity to the ...

. He observed a fellow passenger, a well-dressed woman "rich—not gaudy rich, but old rich", whom he took to be a Protestant. She continued to figure in his mind. He spent three years working on the novel, by night and at the weekend.

Plot summary

Katherine, a

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

woman from Ireland, arrives in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

in the 1950s having left her husband and son. Very slowly she starts discovering the city and gets to meet local

painters Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

. The

Francoist State Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...

and the still recent

civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

are present in the characters' past. She meets the artist Miguel and they both move to a remote village in the

Pyrenees The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to C ...

. The endings of the hardback and paperback editions differ. Tóibín altered two sentences of the book's ending because he thought it was too soft. He said in 2021: "There was one moment where it looked like they were going to be happy forever. What I had was slightly too sugary".

Publication

The novel was first published by

Serpent's Tail Serpent's Tail is London-based independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Pete Ayrton. It specialises in publishing work in translation, particularly European crime fiction. In January 2007, it was bought by a British publisher Profile Books ...

in 1990 and a revised edition was published by Picador Press. Viking Penguin secured the U.S. publication rights.

Reception

Tóibín showed the completed manuscript to

Fintan O'Toole Fintan O'Toole (born 16 February 1958) is a polemicist, literary editor, journalist and drama critic for ''The Irish Times'', for which he has written since 1988. O'Toole was drama critic for the ''New York Daily News'' from 1997 to 2001 and is ...

, who was a work colleague at the time (Tóibín was a journalist in Dublin). O'Toole later said he was "just staggered": "It was obvious from the first twenty pages Colm was an artist". Tóibín's view on ''The South'' decades later was: "If you look at it, you see that the sentence structure is more or less taken from Didion". The novel drew comparisons with the work of

Milan Kundera Milan Kundera (, ; born 1 April 1929) is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera's Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, then conferred again in 2019. He "sees himself ...

. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

s Barbara Probst Solomon referred to "the tremendous amount Tóibín leaves unsaid".

Awards and nominations

''The South'' won the Aer Lingus Literature Prize in 1991.

References

1990 Irish novels Fiction set in the 1950s Novels by Colm Tóibín Novels set in Barcelona 1990 debut novels Serpent's Tail books {{1990s-novel-stub