She received scant attention in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were never very impressed by the female sex, and as far as they were concerned Mary was a little girl who, having become pregnant without losing her virginity, gave birth because she had to, and suffered insults from her child, as parents do, before becoming a helpless member of the crowd that watched him being nailed to a cross and left to die. Tóibín’s Mary is based on a well-known historical character – extremely well-known, in fact, though no one knows much about her apart from the fact that she was the mother of Jesus. His latest undertaking is no less adventurous, and equally wonderful: a first-person narrative set 2000 years ago, giving expression to the sorrow and anger of a crotchety old widow called Mary, as she recalls life in her native Palestine from lonely exile in some nameless Mediterranean town. In his brilliant 2004 novel The Master he channelled the 19th-century world of the novelist Henry James, and five years later, in Brooklyn, he became the host and interlocutor of an inexperienced Irish girl who takes a job in America in the 1950s. He prefers to allow his language to be inhabited by the ideas and experiences of others. Tóibín is a literary altruist: his words and rhythms are recognisably his own, but he never draws attention to himself or to his extraordinary intelligence and artistry. His essays, stories and novels are supple and lucid and gorgeously phrased but perhaps the best thing about them is their reticence. Some people regard Colm Tóibín as the greatest living practitioner of English prose, and I think they may be right. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (Viking)
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