SOURCE: Hosmer, Jr., Robert Ellis. “Dreams in the Dark: Fiction Chronicle.” Cross Currents 47, no. 4 (winter 1997-1998): 531-41.

In the following excerpt, Hosmer argues that The Story of the Night is not as strong as Tóibín's first two novels.

Like [John Banville's] The Untouchable, The Story of the Night, Colm Toibin's third novel, takes as its narrator-protagonist a male homosexual. Toibin creates the character of Richard Garay, son of an Argentinian father and English mother, living through tumultuous times of war with Britain over the Malvinas (a.k.a. the Falklands) and repression wrought by military dictatorship. Whereas the politics of the past loom large in Banville's novel, the politics of the narrative present figure most prominently in The Story of the Night, at least early on.

After the death of his mother, Richard is left alone in the family's downtown Buenos Aires flat; when not giving...