Hisham Matar, Colm Tóibín, Edmund White, Sergio Ramirez

Four more videos are making the rounds, videos of four big-name authors who took part in our 2013 Festival.

Colm Tóibín talking about Ernest Hemingway.

Hisham Matar talking about Marcel Proust.

Edmund White talking about Collette.

Sergio Ramirez talking about Don Quixote.

Thursday: Colm Toibin and Histoires Berlinoises

As usual, I hope I can write every day from the Festival front-line but as usual I underestimate how busy things are and how I have little time for anything other than putting out fires.

That said our first few days have been booming. Starting with Etgar Keret events on Sunday (both

Michel Labrecque

sold out) we were off and running: the opening cocktail on Monday was packed and lots of fun. We gave away two homage prizes to Sheila Fischman and Judith Mappin, in addition to welcome the Quebec Ministre of Culture, Maka Kotto who charming and lovely.

Tuesday we had a smallish but very devoted and enthusiastic crowd at our almemar.org launch party to celebrate our first year of publishing on the Jewish arts of Montreal. Made some great connections and we discussed some interesting ideas for our second year.

Wednesday was slower though we had two events which stood out: Straphangers with Taras Grescoe and Michel Labrecque (of the STM) was really fascinating: two experts on transportation, one Francophone, one Anglophone, discussing the future of Montreal`s public transportation system and what it means for us, commuters. The affinity between them was really lively and interesting because though the come from different backgrounds, have different agendas and live with different assumptions in certain ways, both agree on core issues in regards to the best way to let our city develop and change into the future. What happened after this event is the kind of thing I always hope for: a small group of enthusiasts stayed over, stood in the corner and continued debating the topic for a long while.

At the Grande Bibliotheque tonight at 6:30 pm

The other event was our Perfume Stories event which had almost 200 people, a band, models, readers and a lovely hostess introducing excerpts from books which feature perfume. Definitely a highlight of our Festival this year and the smiles on everyone`s face as people made their way out of the event: priceless.

Today, day four, is about Colm Toibin at the Grande Bibliotheque. There are about 17 tickets left (in a space for 300) so it`ll definitely sell out...this will be a conversation on stage between the Irish writer of Brooklyn and The Master and Eleanor Wachtel. Then it`s off to dinner to honor Mr. Toibin, then back to the hotel to welcome all the arrived authors into the authors` suite.

Tonight we also have Histoires Berlinoises at Hotel 10. This one is in French and will be a discussion between Regine Robin, Eric Dupont (La fiancee americaine), director Daniel Briere. Hosted by Manfred Stoffl of the Goethe Institut. This starts at 6pm.

To win tickets to Colm`s event (there are only a handful of tickets left) and the big event with Edmund White on Saturday at the Grande Bibliotheque, check out the Blue Met Facebook page in a little while: you could win four tickets!

Busy day but I look forward to what is in store...

Hisham Matar and Colm Tóibín doing what they do....

Hisham Matar, our 2013 Blue Met Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Prize winner was interviewed the other day by Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

He also has a piece in this week's New Yorker.

Check them out and then come check him out in person as part of our 2013 Festival. Matar will be interviewed by CBC Ideas' Paul Kennedy on Friday, April 26 at 7pm. Tickets are $15 and are selling quickly! You can get them here while they last!

And our Grand Prize winner, Colm Tóibín, had an excellent short story in the New Yorker from a couple of weeks' back. Tóibín is on-stage with Eleanor Wachtel at the Grande Bibliotheque on Thursday April 25 at 6:30pm. Get tickets here.

Blue Met's 2013 Grand Prize Winner is Irish Writer Colm Tóibín

Our Grand Prize winner for 2013 is Irish writer Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and The Master. Tóibín is one of those writers I've been reading since I was quite young (I was so happy when the jury came back with their decision) and a few of his books are some of my favorites: The Master, which explores the inner life of Henry James and was a revelation, not only in terms of James' own work and life, but in the way one thinks about the public personal vs. the private man.

Blue Metropolis 2013 Grand Prize Winner

I also am a huge fan of The Blackwater Lightship which tells the story of a young woman who must come to terms with her alienated family life as her brother returns home after many years away, dying from AIDS. It's one of the few books I've read which I can recall tearing up while reading, so affected by its emotional core.

I also really liked Story of the Night which is set in Argentina of the 1980s, so much happening under the surface politically, socially, sexually.

Tóibín has written a few books the last few years and our Festival will give him a great chance to talk about these works with our audience.

Tóibín will take part in a few events at the Festival, most notably the Grand Prize Award Ceremony and interview by Eleanor Wachtel. This will be on stage at the Grand Bibliotheque on Thursday, April 25 at 6:30 pm (get tickets early because last year's show with Joyce Carol Oates was amazing - funny, moving and intelligent - and it sold out quickly!).

Writers and Company host, Eleanor Wachtel

Tóibín will also be part of a round-table discussion called Mothers Who Leave, a discussion about several recent books with missing mothers, missing wives. This will be with Montreal writer Nancy Richler (The Imposter Bride) and Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg (The Jewish Messiah). This event, hosted by Shelley Pomerance, takes place on Saturday, April 27 at 2pm.

This year's Blue Met Festival is centered at Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal and runs from April 22 - 28 with over 200 writers from 15 countries! Ticket information available at bluemetropolis.org/home/Festival

The South by Colm Tóibín

It's Colm Tóibín's first novel, dating from 1990, and it was a lovely read. The South tells the story of a young Irish mother living in a village outside Dublin in the 1950s who suddenly decides to leave her husband and young son from whom she is disconnected.

She goes to Spain, sets up with a Spanish painter and begins painting herself, becoming marginally embroiled in the politics the new Franco regime. Michael, the Irish man who lives there at the edges of the arts scene in Barcelona at first unsettles her (he claims to be from the same village she is from), acts almost as an internal voice in sections, mediating the exotic, passionate and often chaotic world of these artists who had put so much effort into defeating Franco. But Michael also acts as a foil for her Spanish artist, Miguel, in that he represents the constrained and restrained emotion that the Irish aren't given license to express (as openly as the passionate, fiery southerners). That said, Michael is more open than Katherine. He allows himself to be carried away by passions, by love of art and beauty in a way that's new to her.

What I like about Tóibín as a general rule is how straightforward his story-telling is. He doesn't get bogged down with long, lyrical passages or ornate descriptions of scenes or feelings. He tells the story in a very matter of fact way, though there is inordinate beauty in this as well. The beauty of Tóibín comes from small details. In a scene set at Katherine's mother's place in London after she has left her family, her mother (who many years before had left Katherine and Katherine's father, too, to follow her own identity) has some friends over, friends who've never been told about Katherine (or that she had any children):

     As they stood in the kitchen when the guests had gone, Katherine asked her mother why she had told her friends that she had no children.
     "I put that all behind me."
     "It feels funny being written off like that."
     "Yes, like walking out of the cinema, leaving it all behind, the big picture."
     "Don't make jokes."
     "Katherine, don't tell me what to do."
     "Did I ever exist for you?"
     "I got out of that place, and I put it behind me. It's what you're going to do, isn't it? Your father wouldn't come. I don't think you've consulted your spouse. Incidentally, he telephoned twice today."
     "Tom?"
     "He'll telephone again tomorrow. I told him I had been in touch with you and I would tell you."
     "Tell him I've left," she said, and turned away.

It's such a simple scene on the surface: the emotion is very controlled. Neither wants to acknowledge the pain they have inflicted on others but both want their own pain acknowledged. Another writer would have dealt expressively with how Katherine was feeling, what she needed to get from her mother. But we get that only under the surface, only be reading between the words. The beauty is in the way they talk past each other, in that final detail when Katherine "turns away," which sounds almost biblical in its ability to both be understated but be quivering with emotion just under the surface.

In his more recent works, Tóibín still avoids dramatic scenes (and when there is something dramatic happening, it's often something that happens on the edge of the details we are given). In this day and age where every feeling and emotion is catalogued and analyzed, I love reading this kind of restrained sense of personal feeling.