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    Nora Webster: A Novel
    Nora Webster: A Novel
    Nora Webster: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Nora Webster: A Novel

    Written by Colm Tóibín

    Narrated by Fiona Shaw

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    2015 Audie Award Finalist for Literary Fiction

    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).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 7, 2014
    ISBN9781442361546
    Author

    Colm Tóibín

    Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.

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    Reviews for Nora Webster

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    • 5/5
      An Irish widow's lament and recovery should be a simple process to Nora's permanently nosy Wexford neighbors and family. But in reality, her life is a jumble of internal quakes and painful remembrances. Nora has four kids and a horrible job, and the Troubles are starting in Northern Ireland. Nora also has a beautiful singing voice and enough money to buy a record player so she can hold her head high at the Gramophone Club. Three years pass as if the reader has had a seat at the kitchen table for some tea. Here are unsolved mysteries and unknown knowns, and fine writing.
    • 4/5
      Maurice Webster dies, leaving his wife and children. The boys are clearly traumatised by their fathers dying and death. This is the story of how the family starts to find a new way of life without him.Whilst this was an enjoyable story, meandering around the three years of Nora's life after Maurice died, I'm not sure it got anywhere.
    • 2/5
      It’s a good read but sad … brought back memories of the struggles my mom went through after my father’s passing. Mom didn’t have the support of family, friends or her community as we were immigrants.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Liked this very much. Good tips as well for anyone needing assertiveness training.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      I can't separate the book from the knowledge that any of the characters could have been my grandmother's neighbors or relatives, my great-uncle and his children still living in town or their cousin running her hotel in Rosslare. A funny little glimpse into what her life might have been like had she not moved away in the 50s.
    • 3/5
      Nora Webster is recently widowed. Unmoored by her sudden loss and the needs of her children whom she now must raise alone, she faces a future a future that was never meant to be. Introspective novel.
    • 4/5
      I really didn't like Nora for most of this book, and while I could tolerate her by the end of the book, her character and I would probably still not get along. She is very strong-willed, but without any substance to her besides stubbornness. She's also very conservative and timid where change is concerned, always mostly concerned with how her neighbors and family will react, as if she has no preferences or interests of her own. She does improve slightly over the course of the book, and her transformation after her husband's death is part of the point of this novel. I liked how the author treats grief and the ways a family moves on after losing a parent.
      This novel is set in a small town in Ireland in the late 60's and early 70's, and I enjoyed this setting a lot. While this story is set away from the violence going on in Derry, Belfast and Dublin during this era, these events are always present on the periphery, as a tinge of unrest that colors the lives of everyone going on with daily life even in the rather out-of-touch community where much of this story happens.
      My favorite aspect of this book was the details about what life was like for people in small non-urban communities as TV and other forms of modern media were still becoming established in the cities. As someone who is used to having millions of music tracks available instantly online, it is interesting to imagine living when a few records on a record player was a luxury, and a novelty, something friends would get together to share as if playing a few records constituted a 'recital'. I put on a playlist of classical music on spotify while I read this book, so I could listen to the pieces referenced in the story, a convenience inconceivable to Nora and her friends.
      One of the boys in this book goes to great lengths to watch the moon landing, and to take photographs of the TV screen as this event was happening. If I want to I can google the moon landing and watch recorded footage of it right now (but I've already seen it a few times, so it's hardly exciting). I could also take screenshots of the video if I wanted to, or download the scans of the images NASA recorded of the mood landing, and print them out if I wanted them on my wall. None of this would be within the scope of experience or imagination of the characters in this book. It is easy to see, through the characters in this book, how huge a cultural divide there is between my generation and the ones who were adults in the 60's, especially in more remote areas.
    • 4/5
      His books end so abruptly and without resolution of a kind. But the character development is great, and the sense of the town and of Nora 's life is well done
    • 5/5
      Colm Tóibín has been a favorite of mine since the inception of Likely Stories in the fall of 2009. He was born May 30, 1955. He is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. He has won dozens of awards—far too many to list here. He is currently a professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in New York, and he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. In 2017, he was appointed Chancellor of Liverpool University in 2017. Colm has written eleven novels along with scads of non-fiction (Wikipedia). Nora Webster is his tenth novel. He has a dream career for any aspiring creative writer. Ever since I immersed myself in the works of James Joyce, I have developed a fascination for Irish writers. Colm Tóibín is at the undisputed head of that list.Nora Webster is the story of a woman with four children—two young ladies away at school, Fiona and Aine, and two boys still in high school, Conor and Donal. As the story opens, Nora has been widowed in her early 40s. Maurice was the love of her life, and despite this devastating event, she organizes her finances to take care of her children through college. At first, lots of her neighbors come bearing food and offering help to the point she becomes reclusive. Tóibín writes, “Once more she noted the hectoring tone, as though she were a child, unable to make proper decisions. She had tried since the funeral to ignore this tone, or tolerate it. She had tried to understand that it was shorthand for kindness” (12). One day, she gets in the car and drives to a seaside vacation village to visit a house she and Maurice owned. Everyone tells Nora she should not make any rash decisions. When she enters the house, she realizes it has no value to her without Maurice. On a spur of the moment, she sells it to a friend, who gives her the fair market price. No one takes advantage of her. Tóibín writes, “‘Well, there are a lot of people who are very fond of you” (13). The children are disappointed, but they accept Nora’s decision.Nora pays a visit to Fiona at school, and they walk to the train. Colm writes, “As they looked at one another, Nora felt Fiona was hostile, and forced herself to remember how upset she must be, and how lonely she might be too. She smiled as she said that they would have to go and in return Fiona smiled at her and the boys. As soon as Nora walked away, however, she felt helpless and regretted not having said something kind or special, or consoling to Fiona before they left her; maybe even something as simple as asking her when she was coming down next, or emphasizing how much they looked forward to seeing her soon. She wished she had a phone in the house so she could keep in more regular touch with her. She thought that she might write Fiona a note in the morning thanking her for coming to meet them” (29). Nora is as empathetic and kind as anyone could be. The biggest problem Nora faces is dealing with her oldest son, Donal. He stutters and slowly bonds with one of Nora’s sisters. Margaret is fond of the boy, and when he develops a fascination for photography, she builds a darkroom in her home. Tóibín’s Nora Webster is the story of a wise, warm, empathetic, strong woman, who, when forced to take the reins of the family, does so with determination. This story can be enjoyed by all ages. 5 stars.--Jim, 6/10/17
    • 3/5
      Nora Webster displays many war and glowing reviews, but I did not feel the emotion in the story. Nora is a young widow with 2 daughters in college and 2 younger sons in school. Nora's beloved Maurice had been a teacher, and his sickness and death devastated Nora. The story relays Nora's struggle to provide for her children and give all of them a normal life. The story is set in Ireland amid the problems between the Catholics and the Protestants, and the introduction of labor unions. Nora skips along taking voice lessons, buying a stereo and records, flying to Spain for a 2-week vacation, taking many vacations with her children, and redecorating her home. Nora lives well for a poor widow.
    • 3/5
      From the review in The Guardian: "Nothing could be plainer than this prose, whose plainness is familiar from the rest of Toíbín's writing. Someone said to me once – not uncritically – that reading Toíbín was like drinking a glass of water. ... The whole novel is done like this, step by chronological step, from inside Nora's consciousness, following where she goes, knowing what she knows and nothing else. ... In less sure hands, these simplicities – one thing after another, after another – could become banal; ordinary life seems banal until it has gone, then it becomes the past and has extraordinary power to move us."

      All true except for the last part, it just doesn't work for me, I cannot really relate to Nora, knowing hardly anything about her past, her youth. Only on the last pages there is a twist and a hint of an affair, of child abuse?
    • 4/5
      This is a very quite book and nothing really happens, but I loved it dearly. Nora is a great character and Toibin's writing and scene-setting abilities are at their peak. Couldn't put it down, but be forewarned that it is the furthest thing from plot-driven.
    • 3/5
      I bought this book after I read an interview with the author. His style is sparse and matter of fact. In the end of the novel I had an impression of Nora Webster, the main personage in the novel that convinced me.
    • 4/5
      Nora Webster is the story of a young 44ish widow who finds herself grieving the loss of the love of her life, Maurice. Nora relied on Maurice for most everything and feels lost without him , finds herself at a loss trying to care for her 4 children , 17 year old Fiona, and the younger siblings, Aine, Donal and Connor. Nora lives in a small town in Ireland , in the 1960's. In the background there are reference to " The Troubles' in Northern Ireland, but this is a much lesser part of the story. Nora Webster is slow moving , beautifully written story of woman slowly putting her life back together after the death of her husband. Nora is a very private person and somewhat resents the intrusiveness of living in a small town. Gradually she rebuilds her life through the need to find work to support her family, finding an unexpected love of music, and navigating the raising 4 children.A quiet, slow , insightful novel that records the everyday intricacies of life, Nora Webster is a beautiful read.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure that Toibin's style suits me entirely, but nonetheless, there was much in this novel to keep me interested. In particular, the response to the death of a significant person (and the reaction of the community) is a topic that interests me, and I think I learnt something from "Nora Webster" in relation to this. Perhaps more interesting were Nora's on-going relationships with her siblings and, (of most interest to me) Nora's relationships with her chilldren. Toibin's not going to get onto my "favourites" list, but he's probably on the next level down.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      It has a roll to it – an ordinary Catholic woman in a faith hogging myth bound culture where the greatest social division is between Catholic and Protestant. Nora, in her mid forties in the late 1960’s loses her husband and is left with two young sons to raise and two older daughters at college. The novel is written by a man – and I’ve come to think after years and years of reading, that men don’t get women’s interiority and nor do women writers get men’s deep interiority. I’m not sure Toibin ‘gets’ the sense of Nora. But in telling the day to day happenings of Nora’s life we sense that it is a story told by one of the sons. It is in his ‘interiority’ where the novel’s sympathy resides. It seems the author is trying to come to terms in his middle adult stage, with his early adolescence and with his somewhat cold and distant mother who is dealing with her grief and getting on with life and coping. There has been inadvertent abuse of the woman’s young sons who felt abandonment by their mother who left her sons with an old relative in the country as the mother dealt with the last three months of her husband’s life with him dying in great pain of a heart condition. As such, the book is about grief and the inheritors of grief. It is also about that peculiar Irish culture moulded by Irish Catholic romantic fables and myths. There is a sensibility to Tobin’s writing - his themes - that accord with mine - as he finds his way out of the cloying Irish Roman Catholicism.
    • 4/5
      This book settled on to me, and so I settled in to it.

      You know when you’re younger, you think that - wherever you are - nothing happens here. Things happen elsewhere. But never here. It’s just regular stuff here. It’s just regular, plain old life. And you itch for the big L ‘Life’. When will that start?
      Oooohhh, look, a bit of drama here, aah that wrinkle smooths out into the everyday fabric now, moving on.
      Tragedy strikes, such a blow, how can one possibly cope, get over it, pick up with life’s bits and routines again? Impossible, it can never happen, but bits and routines are starting to happen again anyway, it just goes on.
      You catch up. You find things you didn’t know you had, or thought you had lost. And now are found again.
    • 5/5
      The reader is immersed in small town Ireland in the late 1960s and, in Colm Toibin's brilliant hands, it's like languishing in a hot bath. This is masterful writing. The moon landing is on the television and the Troubles are rumbling away but never dominate the day to day struggle of Norah Webster to recover from the death of her husband and come to terms with a new life on her own with her two young sons. Nothing very dramatic happens although occasionally it feels like it is about to (a possible revelation about her aunt maltreating her sons when she was left looking after them, Norah's daughter going missing after the attack on the British embassy in Dublin). But it's the smaller, every day events that dominate and illuminate Norah's struggle to find a new independent life - the trip to the hairdressers to have her hair dyed, joining the local gramaphone society, taking singing lessons.
      The most powerful element of the novel is the character of Norah herself. Beautifully nuanced in that she is never completely likeable (especially in her uncomfortable relationship with her sons) and yet we are eager for her to succeed. We know she will succeed but it will be a long and often painful struggle. It's the feistiness that she summons up on occasion (notably her battle to stop her son being demoted to a lower class in school) that shows her at her most sympathetic.
    • 4/5
      I unfortunately had to miss the book club meeting during which Nora Webster was discussed but emailed through my review as follows: "I knew that Nora was dealing with terrible grief, but much of her choice of action towards her children (and others) didn't seem to be necessarily connected with that but more to do with her abrasive and largely self-centred personality. Gradually I came to understand that she was in part reacting, unfortunately, against a childhood that was uncomfortable, but by the point that that little bit of information was revealed I was pretty much over her.There's a strong possibility that I'm influenced by my own childhood experiences in this as I recognise my own emotionally disconnected mum (due to untreated anxiety & depression) in Nora and feel sad and fearful for her own children as a result.The last quarter was an improvement, but overall I'm not tempted to run out and pick up another of this author's works."Since sending through that email a few days ago I have come to feel strongly that my instinct regarding my personal family history was correct and it is the personal emotional discomfort this book caused me that lead me to an overall negative reaction. I have since heard that Tóibín wrote this over something like a decade and a bit and drew closely on his own childhood experience, so maybe he got it all out in the one book and I can try his other works without expecting to be brought face to face with my own, still intense it would seem, childhood-derived pain. Some of our book club members had very positive reactions while others felt largely the same way I did, so it is fair to say that opinions vary and I would certainly not wish dissuade anyone from reading this and forming their own opinion.
    • 4/5
      Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín is a highly recommended character study of a widow in Ireland.

      Nora Webster's beloved husband, Maurice, has died after an extended illness before the novel Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín opens. Nora, 40, must deal with her grief, and she deems the best way to do this is to hide it and put on a stoic face to the world and for her four children. She has been left without enough money to support her family and must find employment again after years of being a homemaker. While Nora is sure her two almost adult daughters, Fiona and Aine, are going to be alright, she is less sure of her two young sons, Donal and Conor. After an extended stay with her Aunt while Nora attended to a dying Maurice, Donal now has a stammer and it seems both boys are suffering and have nightmares.

      But Nora is suffering too, although she is trying to hide it and, really, would like to hide, although the small village she lives in makes that impossible. Nora needs to mourn but feels she can't.
      "She wondered if she would ever again be able to have a normal conversation and what topics she might be able to discuss with ease and interest. At the moment the only topic she could discuss was herself. And everyone, she felt, had heard enough about her. They believed it was time that she stop brooding and think of other things. But there were no other things. There was only what had happened. It was as though she lived underwater and had given up on the struggle to swim towards air. It would be too much. Being released into the world of others seemed impossible; it was something she did not even want. How could she explain this to anyone who sought to know how she was or asked if she was getting over what happened?"

      This is an exquisite character study of a woman trying to do the best she can while facing what appears to be an insurmountable task: normalcy in a world that has been upended and dashed to pieces. She needs someone who can give her good, common sense advice on how to proceed from Maurice's death into her dramatically changed new role, but there is no one to ease the way, no one who can talk sensibly about raising her children, earning money, and how to live now. Nora needs to find a way back into the world sans her husband, and a way to help her family.

      Tóibín does a remarkable job depicting Nora as a real flesh and blood person. We are privy to her inner thoughts. She can be prickly and obstinate, but she is also determined and intelligent. When she rediscovers her love of music it helps lead her on a path to self-acceptance and self-discovery. This is a novel that deals with mourning, but also healing.


      Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Scribner for review purposes.

    • 3/5
      This is my second Colm Toibin read. Like the other book, I loved 'Nora Webster' for the lyrical sense of place and character. Few writers can so beautifully capture atmosphere as Toibin. A story of a young Irish widow struggling to mother her young children while coping with finances, grief and finding her way in the world by herself -- has strong resonance for me. Even so, the book dragged just a bit for me. For those looking for a fast paced or event filled tale, look elsewhere. I will be searching out more by this author in the future.
    • 3/5
      I entirely agree with the review by thornton37814 below. I loved Colm Toibin's previous books but was really disappointed in this one. I could not warm to the character of Nora at all. I only finished the book because we will be discussing it at our Reading Group.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Another gentle story that captures the emotions of a new widow in a small Irish town. Toibin has an art of making everyday people important. Enter pieces for a story. And in this one it was delightful to see a quiet woman come into h own, worrying less about what others thought of he and more about what she wanted.
    • 4/5
      Lovely, sad, true. This is not a book for anyone looking for car chases or brushes with superpowers. There is very little external action. This is about moving on from grief, and about redefining oneself after the person (or people) who define us are gone, for one reason or another. This is about the dangers of timidity. And it is about how others can only grow when we stop limiting them with our own definitions and sometimes with our own love. This story seems so personal and so loving but there are also big themes. A very worthwhile read for those who enjoy very slow and totally character driven stories.
    • 4/5
      The novel begins with Nora Webster’s husband, Maurice, having died and it follows her protracted period of grief and reclamation over the ensuing few years. Maurice was a high school teacher who was greatly respected and much loved. By association, Nora falls under the care of her community even to the point of that care becoming suffocating. She has been left with two young sons and two older daughters. And somehow she will have to find a way to persevere, to make herself anew, or to find herself amidst the flotsam of her youthful inclinations and talent and what has remained to her after her years as a wife and mother. First, she returns to work in the office of a large company, a place that she worked before she got married. Later, she rekindles a love of music and, with the help of devoted music teacher, sets out to hone her voice which has lain dormant for many years. Of course the lives of her children, her sisters, and the other relatives who live nearby do not come to a standstill waiting on Nora to come back to life. So she is forced to deal with some of their challenges even as she struggles to deal with her own.This is a quiet tale of grief, motherhood and more. Tóibín portrays Nora as initially filled with self-doubt, second guessing her own decisions and actions. Gradually she gains confidence, part of which no doubt draws on the steely determination she manifested as a child. And so she draws upon her earlier incarnations of self as she moves toward a settled new form of being, after Maurice, and in her own right. Of especial note here is the sensitive way in which Tóibín deals with the two sons, Donal and Conor, both of whom have been greatly affected by the death of their father.The writing is patient and lingering. It never feels as though Tóibín is forcing his own impressions on to Nora or the others. Their individual complexities are their own and he seems satisfied to merely relate them to us. Perhaps not as subtle and understated as his earlier novel, Brooklyn, but enticing all the same. Gently recommended.
    • 5/5
      Book Club January 2015. Really enjoyed this portrait of grief. Not hurried yet moves along nicely. Nuanced characters who seem like people you know. Interesting how an ordinary family and its interactions can be so fascinating.