Synopses & Reviews
Colm Tand#243;iband#237;n knows the languages of the outsider, the secret keeper, the gay man or woman. He knows the covert and overt language of homosexuality in literature. In
Love in a Dark Time, he also describes the solace of finding like-minded companions through reading.
Tand#243;iband#237;n examines the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential writers of the past two centuries, figures whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives, either by choice or necessity. The larger world couldn't know about their sexuality, but in their private lives, and in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire defined their expression.
This is an intimate encounter with Mann, Baldwin, Bishop, and with the contemporary poets Thom Gunn and Mark Doty. Through their work, Tand#243;iband#237;n is able to come to terms with his own inner desires -- his interest in secret erotic energy, his admiration for courageous figures, and his abiding fascination with sadness and tragedy. Tand#243;iband#237;n looks both at writers forced to disguise their true experience on the page and at readers who find solace and sexual identity by reading between the lines.
Review
John Gardner
Times Literary Supplement
It is Colm Tand#243;iband#237;n's great strength that he is able to attune himself to nuances, and to the ways in which people "invent" themselves.
Review
Ruth Padel
Financial Times
Tand#243;iband#237;n demonstrates wonderfully how a dedicated writer always thinks with other writers: their lives and sexuality, as well as their work. Tand#243;iband#237;n can be engagingly mischievous and witty, but is deeply serious about books.
Review
Mark Levin
Men's Journal
Tand#243;iband#237;n is a superb technician with a brave soul.
Review
Robert Sullivan
Vogue
Tand#243;iband#237;n writes with high-voltage restraint; his sentences are masterfully devoid of trickery...He is tuned in to the silent language of families, the messages that are unspoken and slip past the rest of the world, landing deep into the hearts of those who understand.
About the Author
Colm Tand#243;iband#237;n is the author of four novels:
The Blackwater Lightship, The South, The Heather Blazing, and
The Story of the Night, which won the 1998 Ferro-Grumley Award for best gay novel and is on the Lambda list of the 100 best gay novels of all time. In 1995, he received the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tand#243;iband#237;n also wrote the nonfiction books
Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border, Homage to Barcelona, and
The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe and is the editor of the
Anthology of Irish Literature. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.