“Colm Tóibín’s latest collection of short stories delivers a quietly powerful collection of nine stories that traverse Ireland, Spain, Argentina and the US.”

“The Journey to Galway, set during the first world war, follows a mother travelling by train to deliver the telegram announcing her son’s death to his wife, and the impact of the war on the home front.”

“A Sum of Money similarly explores Irish social realities, focusing on poverty and moral ambiguity. The young protagonist’s thefts at a religious boarding school are portrayed with empathy rather than condemnation, revealing how deprivation and shame can warp childhood.”

“The muted reaction when he is discovered and expelled from the school underscores a recurring motif in the collection: the unsaid, the unresolved, and the quiet accommodation of wrongdoing within institutions and families.”

“In the titular story, The News from Dublin, a schoolteacher’s attempt to navigate the complexities of local politics to secure experimental treatment for his sick brother results in him returning home unable to deliver the much hoped-for news.”

“Five Bridges follows an undocumented Irish immigrant in San Francisco returning to Ireland after three decades in the US.”

“His last weekend with his American daughter becomes a poignant reckoning with belonging, fatherhood and the precarity of immigrant life, framed against the spectre of contemporary US immigration raids and law enforcement under Donald Trump’s second term as president.”

“Sleep and Barton Springs delve into grief and sexuality with subtlety. In Sleep, a gay man’s relationship with his lover falters under the strain of his unresolved grief about his deceased brother, prompting a journey back to Dublin for therapy.”

“Barton Springs, the shortest story in the collection, also concerns a man grieving the death of his brother and offers a fleeting, sensuous moment of connection amid grief when one swimmer is transfixed in admiration of the physical beauty of another.”

“Summer of ’38, narrated by an elderly Marta, reflects on a youthful affair during the Spanish civil war and the lifelong consequences of concealed parentage.”

“A Free Man, set in Barcelona, is perhaps the most unsettling story: an Irish ex-prisoner unrepentant about his crimes attempts to establish a new life in Spain free from detection.”

“The collection concludes with The Catalan Girls, a novella-length story that presents a richly layered family saga centred on three sisters whose lives unfold across Spain and Argentina.”

“The story ends with Montse stealing her sister’s Spanish passport so that she may have a life of independence and financial freedom away from her sisters. This act of betrayal becomes a powerful symbol of her self-preservation and defiance.”

“Across these stories, Tóibín returns to recurring themes: the burdens of history, the complexities of family and sexuality, the scars of poverty and migration, and the quiet tragedies of withheld truths.”

“His prose is measured, empathetic and unsentimental, allowing readers to inhabit moral grey zones without overt authorial judgment.”