Mothers and Sons (2007)

Sometimes they're more about the mothers, sometimes the sons, but most every story in Colm Tóibón's Irish-inflected collection is expertly woven with the threads of devotion, obligation, practical self-interest, and naked emotional need that can tether even the most distant of mothers and sons together. In his shorter tales, Tóibón can let those threads dangle awkwardly. It's only when he stretches out — a widow struggling to overcome the mountain of debt left by her late husband; a son desperately searching the snow-packed Spanish mountainside for his missing mom — that Tóibón fully inhabits his characters in Story Collection, letting them breathe beyond the narrow roles prescribed by the title.