'There is something interesting and intriguing to be found on almost every page' Guardian 'A father . . . is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses____________________________________In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm T ib n turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers. From Wilde's doctor father, a brilliant statistician and amateur archaeologist, who was taken to court by an obsessed lover in a strange premonition of what would happen to his son; to Yeats' father, an impoverished artist and brilliant letter-writer who could never finish apainting; to John Stanislus Joyce, a singer, drinker and story-teller, a man unwilling to provide for his large family, whom his son James memorialised in his work. Colm T ib n illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways they surface in their work___________________________________'Toibin has a hawk-like eye for literary subtleties, and a generosity towards his subjects that is warm and unacademic.' The Sunday Times'Full of insight and intrigue' Observer'Searching, funny, generous' Irish Times'Subtle, witty and often deeply moving' New Statesman
