Nora Webster

I just finished another excellent book by Colm Toibin, best known for writing Brooklyn. This one is about a neighbour of Ailis’s mother, Nora Webster, who becomes a widow in her late 40s in Enniscorthy when she has two girls in college and two boys still at home. It covers the first three years of her widowhood during the late 1960s.
It’s one of those books that deals with fairly mundane topics, one little everyday happening after another, with no plot to speak of. I usually like such books because I think they give a deeper look into human emotion and functioning than plot-driven books. I found myself getting impatient with this book until the very end, when it all seemed to knit together rather poignantly.
Even though it’s a work of fiction, Toibin has said it’s about his mother and he couldn’t write it until she had died. Throughout the book, I wondered how much he knew of her internal life from his observation and speculation versus how much he knew from her sharing with him how she saw herself and those around her. She is described throughout the book as being difficult--she didn’t get along with her sisters or her mother, who didn’t seem to like her very much, and various relatives are critical of her (aunts, in laws). Yet she is dignified, humble, smart, introverted, taciturn, opinionated, and grief stricken. I get the impression it took a long time for Colm to understand and appreciate his mother, who was probably not easy to get to know.
9-28