Alex Witchel wrote a terrific piece on the Irish novelist Colm Toibin last weekend in the New York Times Magazine. I have not read anything by Toibin but this caught my attention:

It is Toibin’s triumph as a writer that his sympathy for his devils — especially the mothers — is great enough to spread the blame to everyone around them. For him, contradictions are paramount. The unexpected rush of warm feeling he can unleash for a character toward whom you have hardened your heart is one of those luxurious moments of catharsis you rarely experience in real life.

…“Do you know it has no single words for yes and no [in Gaelic]?” he said to Sam, animatedly. The fact of it delighted him. For someone who has such little use for “good” and “bad,” the very notions of “yes” and “no” are equally prosaic. Why bother with such useless extremes when all the really good stuff is in the middle?

I find myself looking for nice, pat answers too often, looking at the world in black-and-white terms, as a moralist. I don’t like feeling uncomfortable so I look for easy answers to complicated issues. I know this is foolish.  Or I know it speaks to my own insecurities and that all of the really good, complicated, messy stuff is in the middle.

Here is an except from Toibin’s latest novel, Brooklyn.