Nora Webster: A Novel

This is a novel of quiet but strong complexity from a true master in prose. The voices and language of Ireland come alive again in the story of a young widow with two grown daughters away at school and two pre-adolescent sons at home. After her husband Maurice passes away Norah Webster develops an understandable aversion to the overbearing sympathy and patronization of friends and relatives. This aversion becomes almost phobic, testing your sympathies for her at times. One can imagine her becoming a prickly reclusive old woman, keeping all friends and family at bay. But her strength and fortitude in the face of adversity keep one engaged and sympathetic. It is often that this is strength Norah didn't even know she possessed. Her marriage to Maurice was an escape for her from a job of eleven years where she handed over her wages to an over bearing mother. She errs on the side of caution with her own children not wanting to be this woman she only resented. She found escape and satisfaction in the role of wife and mother with it's many duties, and now finds herself adrift. But she finds resolve and strength and an ability to carry on. What brings this story particularly alive is the certain turn of phrase And prose that the best authors of Ireland possess. This is not an action driven piece, it is a subtle study in characters and their emotions that is completely engaging. The characters of this piece become friends that you enjoy coming to know.

It was very difficult for me to write a review of and to rate this book..................I read this book because I read "Brooklyn" and this book starts out with one of the same characters migrating into this book. Since I enjoyed "Brooklyn" I thought I would enjoy this one; and I did. "Nora Webster" is a bit slow in parts and there are some things that do not seem believable, but it is a good book. The reason I found it so so difficult to rate and to review is that I was/am so wrapped up in the lives of the 2 boys, Conor and Donal. These boys are suffering badly with grief after the death of their father. They get no help in dealing with the grief thus they remain unhappy and distant. This is EXACTLY how kids feel when grief is not properly addressed. I was a kid in a similar situation; I know, oh Lord do I know! Donal tells his mother what has been happening in school and Conor is moved to a different class.......believe it or not this is what frequently happens. SO, because of my connection with these two boys, I don't have an unbiased view of the book. Colm Toibin, you nailed it!!I feel that something significant happened to Donal and Conor at their aunt's. I would like to have learned what that was but this was mentioned only once and never expanded upon. I also have a problem with Nora's muscle pains that were significant. Nora, a very strong swimmer, is not really likely to have been so waylaid by muscle pulls from an attempt to paint a ceiling. This may seem like a small thing, but it bothered me..Good read.................. emotionally difficult for me.

No idea why this book got rave reviews, seems to me an example of an author trading off his previous good name. This book was compared to Anna Karenina. I expected a strong feisty character. Never have I experienced a more dull character or boring book. If I wrote in glorious detail the events of my day / life it would not be an exciting read, well my life seems exciting after this! We are just related the events of her life with no real emotion injected in. She is apparently in mourning following the death of her husband. He got so little mention in this book his presence was almost irrelevant. He was never spoken about within the family even immediately after his death. The boys were either watching TV or doing homework but Nora didn't seem to spend any quality time with them (except when they went to the caravan) or offer them a shred of support after his death. When he is alluded to on a couple of occasions I got the impression she lived completely in his shadow with him making all he decisions, having opinions etc. Sadly she seemed content in this role. She lives in small town Ireland where everyone around her seems to be nosey, critical, judgemental etc. She was even afraid to buy a gramophone! I grew up in small town Ireland and while there may be aspects of that there is also a huge sense of community and following a death support for her would be overwhelming. People care about each other. Nora seemed so bitter she was critical of anyone who tried to support her. She was judgemental of her sister when she invited her for the weekend, irritable with her uncle and aunts who supported her financially as well as trying to support the children. Some reviewers praised her for her strength in dealing with a situation at the school. Yes, she resolved it but in an aggressive and threatening way and I think she acted like a mad woman. I didn't like her as a person and certainly not as a mother so I couldn't feel sympathy for her and her boring life. I also found the style of writing very simplistic, like some just reading a list if events. I'm proud of myself for persevering to the end but this is a disappointing offering from a good author.

Nora Webster unwraps a woman who really does not want to be disclosed and does in a way that does leaves her privacy intact.

On suit les changements dans la vie de Nora après la décès de son mari d'un cancer. L'histoire ne tombe jamais dans le pathos et on ne pleure pas. On découvre la vie de cette femme maman de 4 jeunes (2 grandes filles et 2 garçons plus jeunes) dans la République d'Irlande dans les années 70. Quelques aspects des affrontements entre sud et Nord mais ce n'est pas le propos du roman. l'auteur nous dépeint les changements de vie chez cette femme, mère au foyer, qui va devoir retourner travailler et prendre elle-même les décisions, ce qui n'est pas pour lui déplaire, elle prend goût à cette nouvelle liberté. Lecture facile en anglais, agréable roman.

By any measure, this is a major work of art - and intoxicatingly readable.How does he do it? Toibin brings widowed Nora and her immediate concerns to intense life, amidst her unspoken grief. It all seems ordinary, and it is, but the great care and subtlety of the author gives everything importance. There is no padding, no extraneous description or hyperbole to try and raise the depiction above the mundane. Instead, the quotidian is rendered with luminous power, for does not every person usually feel an intense interest in their own life?Toibin has disclaimed the title of ‘storyteller’, but events in his fiction do unfold with some sense of linkage and progression. There is a connection between Nora’s life with her children, her profound sense of detachment, her return to work at Gribneys, the revival of her love of music, her singing, the people who help her (almost against her will), and Nora’s final grappling with loss. Along the way, her life becomes important to the reader, even her plans for redecoration, because Toibin gives us just enough to allow us to imagine the rest, and so Nora inhabits the reader’s mind. We really want to know how Donal will take to his new school, or how Nora will break the news of her selling the holiday cottage to the children.Nora's wilful isolation, in the aftermath of her husband's early death, is only hinted, but gradually we come to see that this proud, intelligent, independent woman is near breaking point. Unusually – and I think that this is one of the hallmark’s of Toibin’s creativity – we are never given easy keys to Nora’s personality, still less to that of her absent husband, Maurice. Instead, we see things in the half-dark, which is how we humans generally perceive, since we are only half-aware (or less so) of what is happening, and of what we feel, let alone what others are thinking or feeling. We see things through Nora’s eyes, but this does not mean that we know her exactly, since she does not fully know herself, and she is shrouded in grief.This is the best of Toibin's work that I have read. Better than The Master, better even than Brooklyn. Nora Webster has a profound humanity. Toibin's ego-free, precise and gentle style perfectly matches his evocation of a mother struggling to adapt to widowhood in a particular time and place (Wexford in the 1960s, as the Troubles are hotting up). Above all, this great work is a story of love and low-key frustration, each highlighting the other.It is clearly autobiographical in inspiration and broad context, which perhaps gives the work extra power, and that power comes from the love of the author for his mother, his Nora.Interestingly, Toibin gives us a strongly positive religious character, a nun called Sister Thomas, which goes against the grain of his generally negative view of Christianity (for instance, in the uncharacteristically sloppy novella, The Testament of Mary). Not only is this nun a virtual deus ex machina at several critical points in Nora's life, she presages an unusual openness to mystery in the otherwise resolutely secular Toibin. At the end, we are left with an unexplained message from a ghost - or imagined phantom - which prompts continued engagement with Nora's world after one has finished reading.No doubt this was the point, but, in our era of shrill denunciation, it is pleasant indeed to be allowed to follow the contours of the author's - and our own - creativity, without the barest hint of being told what to think.

Narración que te immersa en el mundo y sentimientos de Nora.Escrito de forma íntima y ágil.

Sono parziale perché mi piace Colm Toìbìn scrittore, relatore e persona (ho avuto modo di incontrarlo diverse volte) ma questo libro è davvero meraviglioso! Per me leggere Toìbìn è una sorte di 'tornare a casa', a home-coming language-wise.. Il suo linguaggio è morbido ma sa esprimere aggressività quando la situazione lo richiede ma mai volgare. Entra nella mente dei suoi personaggi come se fossero tutti/e lui stesso e sa esprimere i loro pensieri in maniera magistrale.. Assolutamente da leggere.. con il solo rammarico che poi 'finisce'...

Alles super!