I'd been wanting to read this for along time - it is a small, slim volume if you read it in hard copy, but still I saved mine for a quiet time because I knew it would be a wrenching read. I read it in a few sittings. None of them were easy, though it is a simple enough fictionalized account of Mary's possible story written in first person.

Toibin gives the reader a darkly pragmatic imagining of the trials of women, of the lengths to which people can and will go to get what they want out of someone, even in the face of silence or truthful brevity, of grief, old age, parenting and bereavement.

He gives the reader a unique chance to feel for Mary, for mothers, for anyone who's lost it all in the face of others' relentless pursuit of faith, or power, or conformity.

Worth reading for his account of Lazarus alone. It will change the way you think abt weaving a narrative out of others' accounts of the miraculous .