human activity as sort of odd and strange and random.' At its center is the crucifixion, but surrounding that central scene is 'every form of. Tintoretto's painting, he says, is untidy and chaotic.

But it wasn't until he was walking down the street from that favorite painting to see another Venetian work - Tintoretto's depiction of the crucifixion at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco - that the germ of the novel developed. The idea for The Testament of Mary grew from both his concerns with high art and the lasting influence of Catholicism on his life.įor years, Toibin had been preoccupied with Titian's masterpiece, Assumption of the Virgin. But losing his faith did not mean losing interest in Christianity. Eliot and 'some writers like Joseph Conrad,' he says. Toibin replaced his faith in God with faith in music and art and poetry: Leonard Cohen, T.S. Growing up, he says, 'there was no word for it,' and he describes his feelings as 'absolute confusion.' It was after meeting an openly gay friend at university, he explains, that 'I moved very gingerly from between being a very conservative boy from a small town and being out with some friends.' It was around this time, too, that Toibin acknowledged his homosexuality. 'I suppose I had been moving toward it without knowing,' Toibin tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, 'but, yeah, it went very quickly.' This changed upon his arrival at university, however, when exposure to new people and ideas soon led him to lose his faith.

Toibin grew up Catholic and, for a time, considered joining the priesthood. She is struggling to understand why some people believe Jesus is the son of God, and weighed down by the guilt she feels wondering what she might have done differently to alter - or ease - her son's fate. In his new novel, The Testament of Mary, Irish writer Colm Toibin imagines Mary's life 20 years after the crucifixion. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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