The Master

By: Colm Toibin

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

“Colm Tóibín’s beautiful, subtle illumination of Henry James’s inner life” (The New York Times) captures the loneliness and hope of a master of psychological subtlety whose forays into intimacy inevitably fail those he tried to love.

Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of Henry James, a man born into one of America’s first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers.

The emotional intensity of Tóibín's portrait of James is riveting. Time and again, James, a master of psychological subtlety in his fiction, proves blind to his own heart and incapable of reconciling his dreams of passion with his own fragility. With stunningly resonant prose, “The Master is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist: artful, moving, and very beautiful” (The New York Times Book Review).

I don’t want to know about his sexual life

Very boring and slow. It keeps insinuating he likes the major who is looking after him in Ireland. This bothers me.

Lovely

It is a soothing gentle listen
Loved the voice , narration and the story of Henry James becoming this master of stories & a just a man with all its imperfections as well as strength.

 Excellent book.

This book offered a lovely reflection upon a part of Henry James life. The storytelling was absorbing and completely masterful. The narrator reflected beautiful artistry as he spoke the words of this somewhat precious story.

The Master by Colman Tobin

If you loved story-time as a kid you are likely to enjoy The Master.
More prose than dialog it is calming and worked as well for me as a glass of wine.

Exquisite insight

In England, sexual acts between men were illegal until 1967. Most reviewers posting below seem unaware of this fact and of its incalculable pressure on Henry James.