Lamb House with James for a time. Critical response American writer John Updike described the book in The New Yorker (2004-06-28): “Tóibín's subject is the inward James, the master of literary creation and a vast hushed arena of dreams and memories and hoarded observations”. Daniel Mendelsohn in the New York Review of Books also praised the book, referring to it as "unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist – one who has for the past decade been writing excellent novels about people cut off from their feelings or families or both." An appraisal in Esquire said that "In The Master, [Toibin] brings James to life in a way that no straight biography could." U.S. writer Cynthia Ozick said Tóibín's "rendering of the first hints, or sensations, of the tales as they form in James's thoughts is itself an instance of writer's wizardry". Composition Colm Tóibín chose to write The Master in much the same conditions as his previous novelsimplementing an uncomfortable work environment to generate a very specific work ethic. That includes a hard, uncomfortable chair and choosing to write his drafts by hand rather than with the help of modern technologies like a computer. The impetus for the novel's composition first came from his collection of essays entitled Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodóvar (2002), in which an opportunity was taken for deeper rumination on the sexual identity of queer authors. In light of this study Tóibín began to understand the dramatic potential for Henry James's conflict between his interior and exterior self. However, Tóibín is often keen to point out also that The Master is not simply an exploration of James's sexuality, “I really wasn't that interested in his homosexuality other than what it offered me as a drama of renunciation.” Style The Master is written in the genre of historical fiction and in a third person narrative that emphasises the intimate inner monologue of Henry James, a style of writing that The Telegraph (London)'s Benjamin Markovits refers to as 'Tóibín's speciality'. Markovits chooses to draw a direct line between Tóibín's prose and that of the man he is depicting in virtue of their shared lucidity and precision of language, 'so fine it can render the slightest variation in mood or circumstance'. Furthermore, Tóibín's emphasis on memory and recollection is such that when coupled with James's expertly realised interiority, the reader constantly finds