Nora Webster

1960s. Ireland, the town of Enniscorte is the same where Eilish, the heroine of the previous novel Kolm Toybin "Brooklyn", left for America. The quiet, measured, old -fashioned life against the background of the feud in the neighboring northern Ireland. Nora Webster has recently widowed, she needs to get used to a new life, cope with financial and household difficulties, to raise sons alone. The usual life of an ordinary woman, who had long lost her personality in the shadow of her husband, forgetting what dreams are. In this quiet, subtle romance, as in Brooklyn, at first glance little happens, and at the same time it is full of tension, even passion. How full of them and Nora, who learns to be alone, learns to be herself, sometimes annoying and even shocking the conservative Irish hinterland. "Nora Webster" is a masterly detailed, thin, chamber story of the life of an Irish family. Toybin was wearing a intricate tapestry, depicting little Ireland, a town where everyone knows everyone, where benevolence can turn into a drama. Nora Webster is one of the most memorable female images of modern literature, causing Henryk Ibsen"s heroines.

Press about the book

Nora Webster - Irish love story and a love message to Irish readers from one of the modern masters of Ireland. But Toybin knew so much that his message was much more universal, addressed to a wider audience. When, on the final pages of the novel, Nora Webster burns the letters of the late husband, because they belonged to the time that has gone and will not return, Kolm Toybin turns through his heroine to the reader. The past is another country. If you should be an exile, then only an exile from the world of regrets. The only way to survive is to move your boat forward, even against the current. The Guardian

This deceptively calm drama tells the story of a slow, gradual awakening of a woman who, after the death of her husband, turned into a piece of ice. The last parts of the book are an almost transcendental transition: Nora searches for strength and courage to accept the fact that she repels most of the novel. Toybin’s prose is amazingly simple, but it is elegant, sophisticated simplicity, it is akin to the simplicity, almost the poverty that his heroine is. A very strong novel. The New York Times

Each phrase Toybin is accurate and pedantically balanced. This novel deserves to be read with the attentiveness with which Nora Webster listens on his pages Beethoven. Reading it, you feel kinship with this woman, cold, alienated, harsh, but in the soul of which real life and real longing are raging. Independent

In the hole of the webster there is no craving for self -destruction, like in Emma Bovary, she is not such a bad mother as Anna Karenina, but she is like a sister of these classical heroines. Toybin is almost brilliant in the creation of her image. NPR

The exact portrait of a woman who learns to live again. Publishers Weekly

The radical restraint of Toybin raises what could become a faned story about grief and survival, to a philosophical height. This quiet novel seems to glow, in it the most ordinary routine life is approaching the mystical sacrament. We know about Nora Webster everything and nothing. It seems to be a secret, simple, but unattainable. The New York Times Book Review

This is a novel whose secret is not amenable to literary criticism. Kolm Toybin is not an elegant stylist, he is just an excellent writer. The Los Angeles Times

restraint, dry humor, affectionate severity distinguish Toybin from a number of other good Irish writers. The way he is attached to his characters, to the place that describes. Surprisingly, how exciting to read about this, in essence, boring and very simple life. The Miami Herald

A wonderful restrained novel about a woman awakening from grief and discovering her own space, her own will, desires. Toybin depicts a hole with great sympathy and understanding. The Washington Post

This quiet, painful novel hides real turbulence under its calm surface. Toybin is an excellent student Henry James, to whom he dedicated his most famous novel "Master". Cleveland Plain Dealer