SOURCE: Donoghue, Denis. “Fretting in the Other's Shadow.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5042 (19 November 1999): 21.

In the following review, Donoghue examines Tóibín's choices for inclusion in The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction.

In the twelfth chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses the Citizen says to Leopold Bloom: “What is your nation if I may ask?” Bloom answers: “Ireland. I was born here. Ireland.” Colm Tóibín evidently agrees with Bloom about the qualification for nationality. If you were born in Ireland, you are Irish, and you stay in that condition, even if you leave the country and have no intention of going back. Goldsmith and Sterne are Irish on that consideration; so are Wilde, Joyce, Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, Iris Murdoch, Brian Moore, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien, Julia O'Faolain, Bernard Mac Laverty, Colum McCann, and my daughter, Emma Donoghue, the youngest writer in The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction...