Nora Webster: A Novel, by Colm Toibin
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Nora Webster: A Novel, by Colm Toibin
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From one of contemporary literature’s bestselling, critically acclaimed, and beloved authors: a “luminous” novel (Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review) about a fiercely compelling young widow navigating grief, fear, and longing, and finding her own voice—“heartrendingly transcendant” (The New York Times, Janet Maslin).Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be sucked back into it. Wounded, selfish, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning insight and empathy, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself. Nora Webster “may actually be a perfect work of fiction” (Los Angeles Times), by a “beautiful and daring” writer (The New York Times Book Review) at the zenith of his career, able to “sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY). “Miraculous...Tóibín portrays Nora with tremendous sympathy and understanding” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post).
Nora Webster: A Novel, by Colm Toibin- Amazon Sales Rank: #18472 in Books
- Brand: Toibin, Colm
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Released on: 2015-06-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.25" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, October 2014: Atmospheric and emotional, Colm Toibin’s (Brooklyn, The Master) seventh novel is the story of a forty-year-old widow in 1960s/70s rural Ireland who’s on the verge of slipping back into the isolated life from which her husband had rescued her. Nora Webster is, like Toibin’s best characters, iconoclastic, strong and deep. When she loses her beloved Maurice to a long and horrible illness, she seems beyond help: she resents the neighbors’ well-meaning questions and concerns and she’s so grief stricken she barely notices how her children are suffering. Nora is not entirely likable—a self-centered person mired in depression rarely is. But Nora is also proud, fierce and angry—and slowly, slowly she wins you over. Even more important, she eventually finds a way to save herself. This is not a novel that makes a lot of noise—and yet it’s musical. It has a kind of deliberate, note-by-note crescendo—but very few crashing cymbals—as Nora rediscovers her love of singing, learns how art can help her navigate through grief, and how music can help even the most quiet among us to regain our voice. – Sara Nelson
Review "Fascinating... Revelatory... More thoughtful than Emma Bovary and less self-destructive, in the end far and away a better parent than the doomed Anna Karenina for all the latter’s dramatic posturing, Nora Webster is easily as memorable as either—and far more believable. To say more would spoil a masterful— and unforgettable—novel." (Betsy Burton NPR)“The Ireland of four decades ago is beautifully evoked… Completely absorbing [and] remarkably heart-affecting.” (Booklist (starred review))"A compelling portrait... [of] a brave woman learning how to find a meaningful life as she goes on alone." (Publishers Weekly)“A high-wire act of an eighth novel… Toibin’s radical restraint elevates what might have been a familiar tale of grief and survival into a realm of heightened inquiry. The result is a luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical… There is much about Nora Webster that we never know. And her very mystery is what makes her regeneration, when it comes, feel universal.” (Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review)“[Nora Webster] may actually be a perfect work of fiction… There is no pyrotechny in the writing — just compassion and shrewd insight. Which is where Toibin's brilliance lies… People call Toibin a beautiful writer because they don't know how otherwise to classify such a delicate talent, such empathic simplicity. Some mysteries can't be deciphered by criticism. Colm Toibin is not a beautiful writer, he's merely a great one.” (Darin Strauss, The Los Angeles Times)“Compelling…an emotionally satisfying read…powerful.” (The Associated Press)“Toibin’s restraint, sly humor and gentle prose cadence echo those of another Irish master, William Trevor. So does his affection for his characters… How Nora chooses to make her voice heard and how her children find ways to express their own pain provide Nora Webster’s plot and pleasure…a so-called average life can make for a thrilling read…Toibin presents one woman’s life keenly observed and honored with compassion. With Enniscorthy, he also creates a town, constrained and forever behind the times though it is, that feels like the whole world.” (The Miami Herald)“[A] quietly moving study of a complex character and her ambiguous feelings toward the web of family and neighbors surrounding her in the small town of Enniscorthy…. All his books share precise, restrained prose, which can, in its simplicity, reach elegance.” (Maya Muir, The Portland Oregonian)“Miraculous… a strikingly restrained novel about a woman awakening from grief and discovering her own space, her own will…extraordinary... [Toibin] portrays Nora with tremendous sympathy and understanding.” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post)“Toibin artfully shows us a Nora unmoored…This quiet, wrenching novel conceals considerable human turbulence beneath its placid surface. So Toibin has learned well from Henry James…In many ways, Nora Webster would bring an admiring smile to the Master’s lips.” (Daniel Dyer, Cleveland Plain Dealer)"A deeply moving portrait of the flowering of a self-liberated woman, Nora Webster tells the story of all the invisible battles the heart faces every day." (Buzzy Jackson, Boston Globe)“Momentous, made with consummate art… It does everything we ought to ask of a great novel: that it respond to the fullness of our lives, be as large as life itself.” (Tessa Hadley, The Guardian)“Each paragraph of these pages rewards rereading, so deftly are they composed, and so full of pathos and insight.” (Claud Peck, The Minneapolis Star Tribune)“Richly detailed… Tóibín’s slow pacing results in bright moments of beauty.” (The New Yorker)“Heart-rendingly transcendent… Mr. Toibin’s prose has an elegant, visceral simplicity.” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)
About the Author Colm Tóibín is the author of seven novels, including The Blackwater Lightship; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and The Testament of Mary, as well as two story collections. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.
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Most helpful customer reviews
54 of 61 people found the following review helpful. A disappointing offering from a distinguished writer By Mr. F. Parker In a previous review I described Toibin's "The Blackwater Lighthouse" as "easily the best book I have read in a very long time". Unfortunately I cannot say the same about "Nora Webster". At the beginning the eponymous protagonist is the recently widowed mother of four children. The book describes events in her life over the years following her husband's death. During his illness she has relied heavily on his and her siblings to care for the younger two of her children, both boys. The two girls are old enough to look after themselves. After his death she is resentful of the well intentioned attempts of relatives and friends to offer advice and help.She sells the family's holiday home, gets a job, re-decorates the family home, learns to sing. Meanwhile she seems oblivious to the emotional turmoil being experienced by her children, especially the sons. These events take place between 1968 and '72 in a small town in Toibin's beloved County Wexford. There is some discussion of events in Belfast and Derry as viewed from the Republic. The depiction of life in her workplace, a medium sized purveyor of agricultural supplies, is unflattering, giving this reader a new slant on the notion of "Protestant Work Ethic" as distinct from the attitude, as revealed here, of past generations of Irish Catholics to work."The Blackwater Lighthouse" was, I claimed in my review: "never ordinary or boring. The beauty of the prose and the incisiveness of the dialogue make [it] a delight for the reader." "Nora Webster" is the antithesis of that, both ordinary and boring. I found it disappointing in comparison to what I have come to expect from this distinguished writer.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful. 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' By FictionFan When we meet Nora, it's some weeks since her husband Maurice died of cancer, and the story takes us through the next three years or so of her life. The book is set in Tóibín's own birth town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford just at the turn of the decade to the 1970s. This means it's positioned between two of Tóibín's earlier works: Brooklyn, about a young Irish girl sent abroad from the same town as an economic migrant in the 1950s, and The Blackwater Lightship, about three generations of women forced together by grief and trying to overcome old resentments. Although these books are entirely separate from this one in terms of story and characters, Tóibín makes reference to them both early on, and it would not be unreasonable, I feel, to see the three as a loose trilogy, building together to show us the changes in this small old-fashioned society over the decades, especially as they affected women. Brooklyn was set at a time when girls were still expected to conform to traditions upheld by their families and church in terms of their lives and marriages, while in The Blackwater Lightship, Helen has broken almost completely from this society and its traditions, though we see how they can still exert an emotional hold over her. Here, through Nora Webster, we see the midway point - the cusp of feminism if you like, arriving late in this small backwater, when women were beginning to see the possibilities of a life not pre-defined for them by parents or husbands.Like so much of Tóibín's writing, this is a small, quiet story, told simply, without big philosophical statements or poetic flourishes. But its simplicity enables Tóibín to create complete and utterly truthful characters - people we feel we have known, may even have been. The book rests almost entirely on characterisation - the plot is minimal. Nora is in her forties with two daughters almost grown and living away at school and college, and two younger sons, both deeply affected by the death of their father and by Nora's withdrawal into grief. We see that the marriage was a traditional one, with Maurice as the breadwinner and the one who made the big decisions, while Nora fulfilled the role of housewife and mother and had no expectations of a wider life. Left to cope on her own after Maurice's death, at first she is determined to maintain a continuity with the past and to hold her grief inside herself, hoping that a sense of normality will shield her sons from the worst feelings of loss. But as time passes, and as she is thrust back into the world through the economic need to work, Nora begins to feel the influence of the changes that are taking place in society.My reaction to Tóibín's writing of these women of the generation of Nora, and Eilis from Brooklyn, is a very personal one, mainly because his characters remind me so much of my own mother. The cultures of Ireland and the West of Scotland are so intertwined that I find the society he portrays wholly recognisable; and these strong post-war women who bore their sorrows within themselves, often in silence, are written with such integrity and understanding. As Nora gradually emerges from her first grief and begins, in a small way, to embrace life again, Tóibín subtly shows the guilt she feels, as if her enjoyment is a betrayal of her husband. And when, at this time of change, she finds she is drawn to things that Maurice would never have understood, such as developing a love for classical music and a desire to learn to sing, we see her struggle to accept her own right to make decisions about her life - a right she may never have considered had Maurice lived. Even making a decision to buy something for herself is so carefully weighed against the guilt that she may be being selfish, that her own wants shouldn't matter.Though the story is very focussed on Nora, through her Tóibín shows the impact of the wider events of the time. Maurice was the political one in the family, but now, with the Troubles in Northern Ireland worsening every day, Nora finds herself forming her own opinions and no longer being willing to nod quietly in acceptance of the views of the men in her family. Through her daughters, Tóibín shows how much freer the next generation of women felt, and how much more involved they would be in the world outside the home, both in careers and politics. For me the three books - from Eilis in Brooklyn, through Nora and her daughters, and on to Helen in The Blackwater Lightship - give a complete and wholly credible picture of the changes in women's lives in these small communities throughout the second half of the last century. And of the three books, this is the one I enjoyed most. Nora, while not always totally likeable, is beautifully drawn and her emotions ring true at every step of the way. A deeply moving book, as Tóibín's always are - not because of any cheap emotional tricks, but because of the clarity and truthfulness of his characterisation. This one gets my highest recommendation.NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Scribner.
39 of 47 people found the following review helpful. A quiet masterpiece By "switterbug" Betsey Van Horn It's a modest elegance that pulls you along in this story of 40-ish Irish widow Nora Webster and her family in County Wexford, in Ireland. The gulf between wife and widowhood is daily captured by Nora's inscrutable, withdrawn demeanor and period of emotional turmoil. She is struggling to adjust without her husband, Maurice, who died three months ago. He was a fine teacher and a capable, loving partner, although he didn't share her love of music. It begins circa 1969; no dates are mentioned, but one can assign it by historic events and people, and the story closes three years later.Over the course of the novel, we settle deeper into the conventions and conceits of Nora's provincial family, and especially Nora herself, as she strives to emerge from her quiet despair and well-meaning but stifling cadre of support. She wants to be left alone with her inner life and her sons (she chose not to have a phone), but the visitors, while trickling to few now, continue to politely intrude. Tóibín's exquisite examination of the quotidian reveals a masterpiece of character and reflection. Reading this was like listening to movements of classical music in a minor key. Many are mentioned in the book, such as Schubert's hymn "To Music;" I was drawn to listen to it. The text, or the context of the novel, would fit neatly inside the hymn.Nora's two nearly grown daughters, Fiona and Aine, and her two young sons, Donal and Conor, are her primary concerns. The two daughters seem to be confident and established, on to their own futures (although Fiona teaches close to home). Conor, the youngest son, and Donal, a few years older, (with a significant stammer) worry her the most. She wants to provide a steady life for them, but feels periodically inept. Her widow's fee is small (which increases), and the idea of going back to work after twenty years of marriage is grim. Then there's the idea of reconfiguring her social life, a tough one for the widow.Nora seeks structure, a soothing coping strategy that provides consistency and limits. Every summer now, she takes her children to the beach at Curracloe for two weeks. When she starts working, Nora comes home for lunch (or tea), when the boys do, and is also there to prepare dinner at the end of the day. It's as if she is trying to protect others from experiencing her grief. Her sisters and other family members observe her anxiety, and she knows that they do. She just wishes everyone would leave her alone, and stop coming to visit her with their obligatory condescension.When Maurice was dying at a TB clinic at the edge of town, she had left the boys with her Aunt Josie while she was at her husband's bedside for several months. After revisiting her aunt again early in the novel, Nora is wracked with a tremendous but nebulous psychological strain and fear. She feels something unsaid in the air, and a crushing suffocation from her thoughts about it. This ongoing duel with her inner self and the temporal world mounts with tension, and Tóibín's delicate distillation of prose down to its most spare essence allows the reader to meditate on the blank spaces, which corresponds to Nora's "world filled with absences." The voids threaten to topple over into discord at times; at other times, eloquent stillness. But she is rarely meek, just restrained by custom.Nora is as bordered as a button, with deep-seated zones of repressed desire. There's no grand heroics in her baby steps toward spirited liberation, which makes her that much more relatable. Her private moments listening to music, close to trance-like in her enjoyment--even that has its limits for Nora. I held my breath at times, watching and waiting (hoping) for Nora to emerge from her shell, more fully realized.As Nora gradually moves toward active engagement with the present, the music I hear picks up, and I hear a confident capriciousness at intervals. I was installed in Nora's rich, inner life--one that is stifled, boundless, and hesitantly optimistic. In an inner life, the contradictions are more congruous, spoken only to the self. That's not to say that Nora didn't have her outspoken, laconic wit; she also had moments of fierce independence and what others may think of as eccentric behavior. She wanted release from being everyone else's idea of a widow. Along the way, a nun, a music teacher, and a selfish young woman indirectly guide the taciturn widow forward toward her vocal talent.Nora's doubts and mourning are expressed superbly in her response to music by Beethoven:"The energy in the playing was sad, and then it became more than sad, as if there was something there and all three players recognized it and were moving towards it." "...she was sure someone had suffered, and moved away from suffering and then come back to it, let it linger and live within them."
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