The South was published by Serpent’s Tail in 1990. Katherine Proctor, the daughter of a Protestant landowning family in County Wexford, leaves her husband and son in the early 1950s to live in Barcelona. She becomes a painter, takes a Spanish lover, Miguel — a veteran of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War — and builds a new life among the expatriate community.
The novel moves between Katherine’s life in Spain and her memories of Ireland: the Big House, the Civil War (the Irish one), her father’s political compromises, the emotional sterility of Anglo-Irish life. When Miguel is killed in a motorcycle accident, Katherine returns to Ireland and must negotiate between the person she became abroad and the person her community expects her to be.
Toibin drew on his own experience living in Barcelona in the early 1980s. The novel establishes his characteristic mode: quiet, precise prose; characters defined by what they cannot say; the weight of history (national and personal) on individual lives; and the Protestant-Catholic divide in rural Ireland as a source of permanent unbelonging.
Collecting The South
First edition (Serpent’s Tail, London, 1990): Paperback original.
Market values:
- First edition paperback, near fine: $100–$300
- Signed first: $200–$500