Sumptous.

The breadth of the collection is impressive.

These essays speak in the first person, but are not introspective. It is only in the opening piece, an account of his treatment for testicular cancer, that you get much self-revelation.

Personal, political, and poetic.

Tóibín does something interesting with the illness memoir here: he seeks no lessons; he tries only to be good company on the page. (He succeeds).

There is nothing flashy about these essays, no showing off. They are always interesting and intelligent, written in an admirably clear prose free of academic jargon. In short, this is journalism at its best. I learned a lot from them and am grateful for that. It’s a collection to which I will surely return..

Tóibín’s writing is what people these days inevitably describe as nuanced, a word that has become a kind of shorthand for expressing a person’s rare ability to understand – or to try to understand – the foibles of others..

A Guest at the Feast gathers recent essays that show his full range.

Sprawling.

A hallmark of Toíbín is his uncanny ability to deftly express the emotional undercurrent in his writing, be it loneliness, anger, or nostalgia..

Conventionally, we claim that good readers make good writers. Conversely, good writers with well-stocked minds can make especially good - intense, intricate, involved - readers. Like Toibin, such writers can look subtly at nuances and inflections, then see through pretence or verbiage. To borrow a Toibin phrase, their best commentary might amount to 'placing a halo around ordinary speech.'.

Erudite.

Magnificent.

...quality of candor, insight and frequent wit that he displays in these essays and journalism.