Colm Tóibín

Notice Italian.

He looks like an Italian.

I sort of loved looking like an Italian.

There was a moment years later when we were driving down to Wexford and the road was blocked, the main road.

And we went around another way, myself and my brother, I'm driving, he's in the passenger seat.

And it means we have to pass by this house where we were for those months.

And we do, and neither of us speaks.

We just don't speak.

Because it was probably worse for him because he was four.

And I think it damaged both of us a lot.

And we never knew what to say about it.

And it was slightly embarrassing later because I wrote a novel which had that in the novel.

Is that Nora Webster?

No, Nora Webster was written after my mother died.

But there were novels before that.

which the very first novel I wrote called The South has a mother abandoning her daughter who in turn abandons her son.

So this is pure abandonment.

And you know, you don't write that for no reason, but there were posh Protestants, those people.

So my mother didn't, she didn't notice it, but I suppose in the next one more and the next one, maybe more and more, but that became no matter what I did, the subject.

And you see, the problem was, I suppose, that