This was perfectly fine but I think the story would have benefited from being longer form and further fleshed out! Toibin is a great writer, so what little there was, was beautifully crafted.

I can say that Mr T never fails to make me pedi of being Irish wishing I could read all his work and listen to him all day long!!

When Colm Toibin crosses the line to the mystical he's almost unmatched for me. He managed to pack more nuance in this novella than most full length novels. Well done indeed.

A brilliantly written novella set during the Winter Solstice and revolving around the ancient burial chamber at Newgrange.

OH I'M SORRY - IRELAND?? SECRETS?? ARCHAEOLOGY?? SIGN ME UP. This is a short story about mysteries during the winter solstice and folklore and all kinds of neat things. Read it!

Reading a well written book is quite another thing.
This is at least my third Colm Tóibin and I can’t get enough.
Great mystery surrounds Newgrange, an ancient burial chamber in Ireland. Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.
Archeologist Professor O’Kelly travels there to be the first person to witness the winter solstice. But the villagers believe a curse befalls those who try - and the village too, so they make the Professor as unwelcome as possible to try to drive him away.
This is a very short book, but an extremely pleasant read. I fully recommend it.

This was a beautiful read but I knew it would be if Colm Tóibín was behind it. I love Newgrange, I think it's fascinating. It's older than the Great Pyramids of Giza. was built as a tomb, a passage grave, and on one day a year it is built in such a way that (depending on cloud cover which often ruins the occasion) the entire burial chamber becomes illuminated when the sun shines through the window box above the entrance. This year because of Covid the traditional gathering at Newgrand on December 21st was cancelled so when whole world was afforded the opportunity of watching the illumination unfold. To say it was fascinating would be an understatement. I really loved Colm Toibín interpretation and portrayal of the whole occasion. It is truly magical and he depicted it as such, in his usual masterful storytelling style. It was fascinating to read his take on the disturbed souls of the chamber and their reaction to Professor O'Kelly invading their space. Toibín really is a wonderful write, a marvellous storyteller. His skills, once again, really and truly shine through as he tells the tale of one of Ireland's archaeological wonders through story.

Thank you net galley. As always a great read from Mr. Toibin. I loved this short story and recommend it highly.

Absolutely ethereal.

Above all, this short story's strength lies in the glowing, hushed, and reverent atmosphere it creates. I read this on a dark and rainy day, and it felt like all of nature conspired to add to the feel of the story. It's nuanced and gentle, and it left me with a faint and nostalgic smile on my face - what more could you ask for in a short story?

As I've never read anything by Tóibín before, I wanted to use this to guage whether or not I should try any of his longer works. The unequivocal answer is yes, and if any of them carry the same gossamer-thin veil of wonder and beauty as The Shortest Day, I know I'll be lost to this world for good.

A short tale about the ancient burial mound at Newgrange, Ireland and the arrival of (real-life) Professor O’Kelly who wants to uncover the chamber’s secrets, in particular the way the light enters at the solstices, much to the chagrin of the local community who feel the secrets should be left uncovered and to the displeasure of the dead buried there who don’t want their peace disturbed. It’s an atmospheric story – if you like ghosts – but there’s little character development and it just sort of fizzles out at the end with no big reveal or any surprises. I found the mystical element unconvincing, although I could understand the locals’ resistance – but the way they demonstrated it was actually quite silly. I couldn’t help wondering what the point of the story was. In reality the chamber was investigated and although some mystery remains Newgrange is now a tourist destination and access at the solstice is permitted by lottery. Plenty of online footage to dispel that last trace of mystery – so perhaps that’s what Toibin is saying? We should have left the dead in peace? In any event, I found the tale pretty much a, well, non-event.

Colin Tobin never fails to write wonderful engaging novels.This is a short but very engaging story.I really enjoyed this book .#netgalley#theshortestday

Whilst I was reading this I did not know about Newgrange, that it really exists. So when I finished I was still in that kind of fugue where you hope that change will not come, where not everything is exposed to the eagle eyed microscope of science, which sees facts, facts, facts and the media/gossip circus trots in with interpretation. Because it is as O'Kelly says, science gives us facts, four legs, white wool, then we say 'sheep' but hey it might be a 'lama'.

I loved Toibin's well worded interpretation, it took me right in and I still feel the whispers, the light, the quiet, the stories..............

An ARC gently give by author/publisher via Netgalley.

Archeologist and Professor Professor O'Kelly plans to spend the days leading up to Christmas trying to decipher the mystery of the the burial chamber at Newgrange in Ireland.It is older than the Pyramids, older than Stonehedge and once a year on the winter solstice, the sun's beam shines through to illuminate the chamber within. But inside the chamber reside spirits who are revived by that yearly light and they are not happy that the professor may disturb their peace:

<i>He is a man alive in the world. He is capable of anything.</i>

The Shortest Day is a lovely and atmospheric short story by author Colm Tobin. It has the feel of an old Irish folk tale as magic and tension are engendered by the possibility that a man of reason and ancient spirits may be brought together by a single ray of light. The ending surprised me and some may find it too abrupt but, to me, it felt like the right ending rather than the expected one.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Amazon Original Stories for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>

Colm Toibin is a beautiful writer. I adored his novel, Brooklyn, and there are other titles by him that I would like to read. The Shortest Day by this favorite author is a short story and one that seems appropriate for this time of year with the solstice approaching.

The Shortest Day is a gorgeous story written by a master. I was immersed in its world so quickly. The tale is about an archaeologist who is researching a site, Newgrange, that brings to mind a sacred site like Stonehenge. He is a man of reason and proofs. Readers observe him, his wife and his personality.

Within Newgrange are the spirits of those from a time almost before time. These spirits have personalities, vanities, tempers and other qualities of humans. They await a special light that comes only once each year on the shortest day. This light sustains them in times ahead. The spirits do NOT want an archaeologist to visit at this sacred time.

From this set up, what happens? I highly encourage you to read this short story to find out. I was engrossed in this tale while I was told a story by a most competent, capable and intriguing master.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. All opinions are my own.

This was a very quick read and well written. It was a delightful read and I am so happy I got the chance to read it and review it!

Very interesting brief novel about an archeologist visits an ancient tomb in Ireland on the Winter Solstice, defying the locals wishes.
Toibín’s novels are always brilliant and this is no exception. Thanks to Netgalley for the copy.

Published digitally by Amazon on November 3, 2020

“The Shortest Day” is a short story that is easily consumed in less than an hour. The story is available through Amazon as a “Kindle edition.”

Professor O’Kelly, an archeologist, has spent his career investigating an ancient burial chamber at Newgrange. As a scholar, O’Kelly focuses on facts supported by evidence. He does not speculate about things he cannot prove. When people ask him about spirits of the dead people who were buried in the tomb, he reminds them that spirits are beyond the remit of an archeologist.

What O’Kelly does not know is that spirits do dwell within the chamber. The spend their afterlives telling each other stories. Only one spirit, a woman named Dalc, is able to add new information to their collective knowledge because only she can leave the tomb and roam around in the world.

Once a year, on the winter solstice, a beam of light illuminates the chamber. The spirits are sustained by the light — it renews their energy — but they do not want the outside world to invade their resting place. “We need to be separate from the mortal world,” a spirit argues. “No one ever planned that this sacred space might be shared with anyone.”

In her only contact with a mortal, motivated by fear that archeologists would discover the beam of light, Dalc told a villager that the annual illumination of the chamber is a secret “that does not belong to the world.” Dalc explained that “we must all know our place in the great scheme of things. We respect mystery and silence and spirit.”

Dalc made the villager swear to keep people away from the tomb on the solstice. The villager took her vow seriously. While current villagers are aware that the winter solstice is the one day the tomb is not to be disturbed, the secret has not spread beyond the community. Until, that is, a drunken villager rambled about it while O’Kelly was visiting a local tavern.

When O’Kelly chooses the solstice for one of his visits, the villagers fret that the spirits will be disturbed. By the story’s end, the reader will be invited to ponder the impact of O’Kelly’s discovery.

The foundation of this story is true, in that Michael O’Kelly did discover the phenomenon in 1967. Why the tomb was designed to illuminate on the shortest day of the year is unknown. The illumination clearly required careful planning and ingenious design. According to the Newgrange website (the place is a tourist attraction now), locals did tell stories about the annual lighting of the chamber, although they didn’t reveal exactly when it would happen.

I always admire Colm Tóibín’s prose and his ability to create atmosphere. Like all of Tóibín’s work, the story is interesting and thought provoking. What thoughts Tóibín intended to provoke is something of a mystery to me. Perhaps, as an Irish writer, he couldn’t resist writing a ghost story and that’s all there is to it. But I have struggled to reconcile the spirits’ fear with the story’s ending, which seems to suggest that the fears were groundless. If the lesson learned by the fretful spirits is supposed to teach a larger lesson, it eludes me. Surely not all fears are groundless.

O’Kelly’s lucky discovery enriched the living by revealing an amazing bit of ancient engineering. I suspect Tóibín’s point is that unscientific fears harbored by villagers should give way to the revelations of science. That interpretation might permit the light illuminating the chamber to be seen as light that chases away the dark fears of superstition. But maybe not. Maybe I’m only projecting my own frustration with people who reject reason and science. In any event, I like the story. Maybe it’s my dimness that prevents me from fully appreciating it, but the fact that a story is challenging isn’t a reason not to recommend it.

RECOMMENDED

This is an extremely short story about one of the most intriguing wonders of the world, Newgrange, an ancient tomb built in Ireland approximately 2000 years before both the pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge in England. It is a story of the spirits who reside there and an archeologist trying to uncover its secrets. These 31 pages made a great beginning and a great premise, but they just weren’t enough for me! Colm Toibin is such a marvelous writer, and he paints such a vivid picture of Newgrange and its spirit inhabitants that I would love to have continued reading about these characters for at least another 300 pages. The story abruptly ended leaving me completely unsatisfied. Mr. Toibin, please give me more!

3.5★
“What fascinated him most, however, was the method of building. Someone among them knew about stress and weight. Nothing here was random or primitive or wild.”

Professor O’Kelly has finally found a time when he can investigate a Neolithic passage tomb from 3200 BC without students and colleagues along. He’s picked the few days before Christmas, when everyone else is busy and the weather is uninviting. He’s even done his Christmas shopping early (unheard of, for an absent-minded professor), and is anxious to get to his lodgings.

Everywhere he stops along the way, the people seem to be waiting for him, knowing where he is going, and they don’t seem pleased about it. The Newgrange structure is older than both the Pyramids and Stonehenge. A common feature of them is the list of questions. Who? Why? And especially How?

He has been asked often what he knows about the people and why they built it.

“‘But did they have gods? Or believe in an afterlife?’ one writer had insisted.

‘It is my job to sift the evidence,’ the professor replied. ‘There is no evidence that would allow me to answer that question.’”

Of course he’s much more curious than he admits, and he’s becoming increasingly aware that the locals know something he doesn’t. We, however, are privy to some voices, or sounds, or drifting thought patterns inside the tombs and their worry about his coming there over the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.

Around the world, archaeologists have found ancient structures that mark seasons and the solstices and equinoxes.
https://www.almanac.com/content/ancient-sites-aligned-solstice-and-equinox

He realises that future archaeologists won’t be able to tell from our monuments and places of worship what our beliefs were.

“The scholars would just have the arches, the pillars, the tiled floor, the outline of the building, perhaps some of the items used on the altar. But if they did not have the prayer books, then they would know nothing about the prayers that were said, or the rituals that were performed. So, too, with Newgrange. He had the stones, but he did not have he equivalent of prayer books, whatever form they might have taken.”

It’s a very short story, an Amazon Original, but I have to admit it wasn’t what I expected from an author I’ve heard so much about but hadn’t read before. But I certainly enjoyed being introduced to Newgrange, I will read more Colm Tóibín. Thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for the preview copy.

My Goodreads review includes a photo of Newgrange. The tomb passageway in the story is from the entrance into the tomb itself.

Photo from Newgrange from Voices From The Dawn

They also have other information and photos and a virtual reality tour.
https://voicesfromthedawn.com/newgrange/

Screenplay for “Indiana Jones and the Secret Soul-stice” or some sort of Gaelic ghost story? Not your typical Toibin. The writing is lovely, as always, but the tale seems to lead to a dead end. That’s a double entendre, folks.