Book: Nora Webster
Author: Colm Tóibín
Reviewer: Paul Gleeson, Consul General of Ireland in Atlanta
Set in Wexford in the southeast of Ireland at the end of the 1960s, “Nora Webster” tells the story of a recently widowed woman, Nora, and her attempts to carve out a new life after the death of her husband, Maurice.
Tóibín may be the finest Irish writer alive today: His sentences are crisp and unshowy, and he is able to paint the most superb, rounded portraits of wholly believable characters. He is excellent here on how the mostly well-meaning niceties of people dealing with the bereaved might be perceived by the person grieving. While the lead character in Tóibín’s previous (also terrific) book, Brooklyn, chose to leave Wexford for a new life in the U.S., here Nora stays put in her hometown and finds a kind of solace in music, a new job and the maturing of her children.
The book also covers a turbulent time in Irish history, when civil-rights protests in Northern Ireland collapsed into violence and conflict. As a study of Irish society – and rural Ireland in particular – “Nora Webster” is comparable to John McGahern’s “That They May Face The Rising Sun,” offering revealing insights into the Irish mindset and the quirks, biases and kindnesses which pull our island in various directions.
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