Given that he wrote a collection of short stories entitled Mothers and Sons, it's not surprising that Colm Tóibín has devoted a whole novel to the most famous pair in history. But his Mother of God is far from the sorrowing and yet accepting figure familiar to most of us: instead, Tóibín conjures a woman who continues to grieve angrily many years after her son's crucifixion. Furious with Jesus' disciples and unwilling to participate in the version of history being assembled by the gospel writers, Tóibín's Mary is a powerful, unsparing figure—quite typical of her creator's singular imagination.

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