Authors: Colm Toibin
Nora Webster (45 page)
“I am going to be in a choir,” she said.
“In the cathedral?”
“No, in a different choir. In Wexford.”
“I thought that man didn’t like you.”
“Well, they have changed their minds.”
“And what are you going to sing?”
“Brahms’s
German Requiem.
”
“Is that a song?”
“It’s a series of songs, but for a lot of voices.”
He seemed to think about this, weighing it up, and then he nodded. He smiled at her, satisfied, and then he went upstairs to his room. She sat alone by the fire and thought that she would put on music, something she particularly liked. She hoped that he would sit with her for a while before he went to bed. In the meantime, the house was quiet, the silence broken only by the faint noises from Conor upstairs and the crackling of wood burning slowly in the fire.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© Brigitte Lacombe
C
olm Tóibín is the author of seven novels, including
The Blackwater Lightship;
The Master
, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize;
Brooklyn
, winner of the Costa Book Award; and
The Testament of Mary
, as well as two story collections. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
authors.simonandschuster.com/Colm-Toibin
ALSO BY COLM TÓIBÍN
Fiction
The South
The Heather Blazing
The Story of the Night
The Blackwater Lightship
The Master
Mothers and Sons
Brooklyn
The Empty Family: Stories
The Testament of Mary
Nonfiction
Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border
Homage to Barcelona
The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe
Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodóvar
Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush
All a Novelist Needs: Colm Tóibín on Henry James
New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families
Plays
Beauty in a Broken Place
Testament
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014008519
ISBN 978-1-4391-3833-5
ISBN 978-1-4391-4985-0 (ebook)