Nora Webster

This novel is such a slow burn. I came to it after reading a thriller, so perhaps that’s why the pace seemed so slow. And then I took a deep breathe and let myself sink into the deep pool of the story. Reading this book was a little like listening to my mother tell the story of her life, tiny baby steps. The everyday voice of Nora, a kind of everywoman, is so clear. An ordinary woman, she is grieving for her husband Maurice and living in a world of echoes. This is a novel about grief, living with grief, and the slow re-awakening of life. Tiny baby steps.
Nora cannot indulge her grief. For one thing, money is short and her two young sons must be cared for. Her two daughters too, though older, need their mother although they don’t show more think they do. Nora struggles to get through her own day in which every minute is shadowed by her loss, but life gets in the way, decisions must be made. Day to day she does the best she can, trying to get the everyday detail right but not seeing how her sons’ grief is manifesting itself. Instead she worries about paying the bills and avoiding people in the street who want to pay their respects. Colm Tóibín has created a timeless rural Ireland where everyone knows everyone else from childhood, where the etiquette of grief is followed, where it is difficult to have secrets.
As readers we experience all of this in Nora’s own mind, we are inside her head: this is Tóibín’s real skill. It would be easy to say this is a book about the grief of an Irish woman, and not much else. And to be fair, there is not a lot of action in the first half of the book. Then, unable to say ‘no’ to an invitation as it would be impolite, Nora starts to sing. And that is the first baby step of her re-awakening.
At the beginning, I wondered if I would finish it. When I finished it, I wanted to start reading it again.
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A beautifully written novel about the complexities of grief and loss, set in a small town in the southeast of Ireland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the book begins, the eponymous Nora is recently widowed, wondering how she will be able to maintain her family with the loss of her husband's wage as a schoolteacher and inchoately furious with the expectations that everyone in Enniscorthy seems to have about a woman in her position.

It's fascinating for me to scroll through some of the other comments on here and to see how many people describe Nora's character as cold, when surely Colm Tóibín draws her as someone who feels intensely but who often doesn't have the words to describe what she's feeling—someone who perhaps lacks show more the ability to articulate her emotions to herself. Equally, I'm bemused by the reviews which state that Nora doesn't convince them as a person and/or as a woman, when she was to me so powerfully representative of a certain generational type of Irishwoman. One of my grandmothers would have been a few years older than Nora and a few notches down on the social ladder. She never once told me she loved me, though I have absolutely no doubt that she did; the idea of other people "knowing your business" was anathema to her. Better to leave some things unsaid than to fear you've said too much.

This is a novel told in vignettes, and I thought some of them were stronger than others; one or two could perhaps have been abstracted and stood alone as short stories, and I can't quite decide where that leaves my opinion about the overall structure. Still, there's no denying Tóibín's ear for dialogue—though I don't think there's ever an adverbial descriptor of tone or manner of delivery, I could hear the speech as I read—or the very quiet, deadpan humour. (Admittedly much of the latter may be lost on a non-Irish audience. Nora and some of the other characters approve of Charlie Haughey because he's the "coming man" who's going to shake things up and has a way with money and is looking out for the widows; there are layers of ironic humour here if you know anything about Haughey's later career. I found the scenes set in a community table quiz and its aftermath in the pub to be mordantly funny, but if you never spent time in a pre-Celtic Tiger rural Irish pub, you might not agree.)

A subtle book about a quiet life. show less

After her husband's death, Nora gradually rebuilds her confidence in life, goes back to work, tries to learn to accept help from her family, tries to work out what is going on inside her children's heads, redecorates the back room, and rediscovers her interest in music. In the background, men are walking on the Moon, Jacqueline du Pré, Pinchas Zukerman and Daniel Barenboim are recording Beethoven trios, Troubles are starting in the North, and even County Wexford seems to be taking its first tentative steps into the twentieth century.

This is a book without any obvious big narrative climaxes and turning points, it's a delicate, detailed study of the many little ways in which life changes over a period of time and how families work. And show more Nora is a wonderfully engaging character: the headstrong girl once tamed by her marriage to a respected teacher and political activist but now finding the satisfaction of taking her own decisions again, and being surprised to discover how many people are actually still afraid of her. show less

Like Barbara Pym, Colm Tóibín can take ordinary life and make it...well, engaging. Nora Webster has suddenly lost her husband, while she still has two young sons to raise, and two older daughters to get through university. This book is all about her feeling her way through the grief and uncertainty, taking charge of her new life bit by bit, while fending off well-meaning but intrusive neighbors and relatives who know just what she ought to be doing, and sometimes go so far as doing it for her. Somehow she finds the balance between accepting the help she needs, and putting the kibosh on the meddling, but not without missteps and stumbles. We do feel she'll probably be all right in the end, and so will her children. The setting, which show more is mainly in the background, is the late 60's into the start of The Troubles in Ireland, and we get a fascinating glimpse of the times from the perspective of a small community well to the south whose members are so far untouched by the unrest and escalating violence, but have a variety of views on its causes, justification and potential solutions. show less

NORA WEBSTER is a book to savor, but alas, I raced through it; I devoured it. The story of this young widow with four children is perhaps one of the most affecting stories I have read in years. It also gives you a small, inside look at "the Troubles" in Ireland in the late sixties and early seventies, with its allusions to the riots and shootings in Derry and Belfast. And the moon landing coverage on TV sets it early on firmly in 1969, which made me remember my own life from that time - in graduate school, married with a new baby. At the same time Toibin's Nora was struggling with the death of her husband and all the grief and confused feelings that followed, not to mention wondering how she would manage financially with her four show more children. Bottom line: the real subject here is the interior life of a woman who seems as real as a relative or neighbor. Nora Webster is a character that will linger long in my consciousness. A character to savor. I hated to see this book end. Toibin is an incredibly gifted writer. Very highly recommended. show less

I'd forgotten how well Colm Tóibín writes about quiet lives until I was halfway through the first chapter of Nora Webster, and entirely hooked. Set in Ireland, in 1968, the novel centers on a woman in her mid-forties, whose husband has recently died, leaving her to negotiate child-rearing, find a way to support the family and to become someone other than half of a couple. Nora's awesome though, being stubborn and willing to stand her ground when she needs to.

Tóibín is writing about an Ireland that doesn't exist anymore, just as it began to change with the Troubles beginning in Northern Ireland and the conflict a growing concern in the Republic. And women's roles were changing, with Nora's daughters experiencing vastly more freedom show more than she did. Nora, herself, gets to experience some of that independence, slowly and reluctantly choosing hobbies and interests outside of what her family circle enjoys.

There's no great action in this book, no central conflict to resolve. It unfolds like ordinary life, a series of challenges and decisions to be made and lived with, as Nora works to keep her family going and to find her own feet. And the writing is lovely; unassuming and clear. I'll always read whatever Tóibín decides to write because of the quality of his writing, but I also love the care with which focuses on women who live their lives largely unnoticed by others. show less

Colm Toibin did an excellent job portraying Nora Webster. She is so ordinary you can see yourself in her. She can't bring herself to say the right things and blurt out the wrong things. She wants to laugh when she shouldn't. She offers silence when she doesn't want to say what she should. She frequently is at a loss of what to say in reply. There are so many things she wants to say but doesn't because she knows she shouldn't. She knows less about her sons' lives than her sister-in-law but does not want to admit it. She doesn't know what to do with her children. But she knows what she doesn't want, and is able to stand up for herself. She learns to like music and singing, and make friends. Her instincts of what's best for her children show more turn out to be right. I love her! show less