The Magician - Colm Toibin

 The only Toibin books I had previously read were Brooklyn and The Testament of Mary.  Both were interesting and definitely well written, but they were very short.  The Magician is substantial, almost 450 pages.   It is a novelisation of the life of Thomas Mann, which also includes his children, especially the two eldest, Erika and Klaus.   I am very interested in Thomas Mann, having found my way to him over the last twelve months or so.   I discovered Klaus as recently as last month.

I am therefore the ideal reader for The Magician.   Toibin is also clearly a huge fan and he has read a lot more Mann than I have.  Even so, it is clear that Toibin has chosen to write the novel in the cool, detached style of his hero.  It works brilliantly.  He has also been careful to avoid the trap into which so many novelists fall when writing novels about other novelists.  Mann used autobiographical elements in some but by no means all of his novels.   What he says about such elements in the books is not necessarily his opinion.   Toibin knows this.

Toibin structures the book by place, emphasising his concept of Mann as a lifelong exile.  This is especially effective at the end, when Mann visits Germany from America and ends up living in Switzerland.   The women in Mann's life, from his wife Katia to his three problematic daughters, his Brazilian mother and his two sisters who both commit suicide, are brilliantly evoked, all very different.   He is, I felt, oddly less successful with brother Heinrich and son Klaus, who I would have thought were grist to the mill of any novelist.  Perhaps he thought that because Thomas clearly didn't understand them, neither should the reader of a book about Thomas.   Nevertheless their deaths are touchingly handled.

One of the blurbs on the cover calls The Magician a masterpiece.   I'm not sure it is possible to write a masterpiece novel about another novelist.   Two of Mann's masterpieces, after all, feature composers rather than writers.  That said, Toibin and The Magician come very close.   It is a wonderful achievement, humane, empathetic, deeply considered.

The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin

I remember when this novella came out in 2012. There was a lot of fuss, mentions of transgression.  Turns out it's not transgressive at all and rattles no more cages than Toibin's supremely bland Brooklyn which came out around the same time.

This is not to say it's badly written.  It's not. Nor is it illuminating, moving or - I'm afraid to say - particularly interesting.  The Jesus who appears here is the official one, the one who works miracles, who speaks in Thee's and Thou's, and who is obsessed with his mission.  The disciples, unnamed, who pop up from time and time, are slightly more interesting, after the crucifixion squabbling about what is the official version and who gets to write it, at the crucifixion itself notable by their patently craven absence.  Indeed, it was this explicit suggestion by Toibin, through Mary, that I found the most interesting aspect of the book.

Mary herself is sadly not especially interesting.  Her role seems to have been the Gospel one - she gave birth to Jesus, nursed him through infancy, and tben lost touch or was cast off.  The title is accurate; this is Mary's account of what she saw of her son's ministry and death - the account the Gospel writers prefer to ignore because it tends to diminish them.  The structure, switching between Mary's declining present and the dangerous past in which her son is captured and crucified, works well.  Toibin doesn't shy away from the other Marys of the traditional narrative and focuses on Mary, the sister of Miriam and Lazarus.  This Mary accompanies our Mary to Golgotha. She also links in Lazarus, raised from the dead after four days - we are left in doubt that he was really dead and returned - but not to full life.  He cannot eat or drink, just moans and groans, evidently in mental and physical pain.  The present Mary is also facing up to death.  The question is suggested: Will she be restored to eternal life as the gospellers would have her believe, or the sort of quasi-life that Lazarus endured?

Perhaps Toibin would have done better to explore the Lazarus story.  He didn't and must be judged on what he did write.  As I say, the writing is masterly.  There are subtle questions and suggestions here.  Overall, though, I found it hard to care about this Mary whose only purpose in life seems to have been to act as a divine birthing pod and, for a brief few weeks, mute witness to an appalling death.