The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost.In The Master Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and Long Island, captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe. Who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of thehazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.