SOURCE: O'Faolain, Julia. “Keeping the Peace.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4666 (4 September 1992): 19.

In the following review, O'Faolain discusses what The Heather Blazing reveals about Ireland and the Irish social conscience.

The title [The Heather Blazing] comes from an old song. “A rebel hand set the heather blazing” has a lilt from the days when Irish reality was in alien hands and language could more easily subvert than confront it. Today, narratives coming from the Republic are cooler, and their prose is as likely to be notable for precision as for panache.

In his impressive first novel, The South, Colm Tóibín used both to quicken old themes: a repressive community, a woman painter's break for freedom, exile, memories of the Irish Troubles, and a great house burned down. His writing throughout was of an almost painful exactitude, and it is intriguing to find him now turning his limpid...