Nora Webster is a widow with four children. Her husband died due to heart disease and died in agony, still quite young (Nora herself is 46), so Nora is learning to move on: she returns to work, establishes social ties, tries to arrange life in a new way. We find her already in a state of quiet grief, when crying with hand-wringing is far behind, and some little things remind us of the loss every day, carrying a series of memories.
"Nora Webster" is a cast of about a year of Nora's life, which consists of meetings with relatives, attempts to get closer to children, finding new things that can make the heroine happier and rare memories of how she lived before. In the work, as in the life of the main character, there are no bright events, the epithet "quiet" is most suitable for this novel, since everything in it seems to be a little muted, and only a newly purchased record player tries at full speed, playing recordings of orchestral concerts.
For me, Toibin's style is clearly associated with the work of Chekhov, who could masterfully describe a series of seemingly insignificant events, such as drinking tea, but at the same time you read without stopping and by the end you fully realize that a significant story somehow developed by itself from completely insignificant details.
From books with a similar plot, you always expect that the author will make you fall in love with the main character, and in order to describe him so beautiful that there will be a reason to wonder if such people exist in reality at all.
Nora Webster is clearly not one of those in whose company you feel like a fish in water from the first seconds: cold and detached, she has been scaring her sisters for decades, and now, it seems, she is as far removed from her own daughters as possible. It seems that Nora's husband was the only person she let closer to her than at arm's length, and having lost him, she only increased the distance between herself and society.
After reading it, I was able to perceive Nora exclusively as an acquaintance, a work colleague, about whom I know a certain number of facts, I had some opinion, but what is going on in her soul is a mystery.
Toibin described the life of Ireland in the seventies with small children, despite the fact that he did not go into the wilds of politics or history, relations with Northern Ireland, protest actions, workers' unions gaining strength, and the attitude of the country's population to the church, both Catholic and Anglican, found their place in the novel.
Since several generations and representatives of different strata of the population are represented in the text, it is teeming with opposing opinions, different points of view on any issue, there is more passion in the dialogues than in the events described, since the whole "movement" in the novel always happens somewhere there, and the characters can see it only on TV (here the image of a photo apparatus is interesting, which is destined to capture not life itself, but only the TV screen).
How they rested, what they lived, what they wore and what they talked about over a cup of tea or a glass of cocktail - all that Toibin wrote about on the pages of his novel, you imagine vividly, and gradually you are fully involved in this measured life.
"Nora Webster" is clearly not from the category of books that help pass the time and captivate with an intriguing plot, but it may well appeal to those who appreciate realism in literature.
I would compare reading this novel with peeping through the keyhole for neighbors: a series of everyday moments for them does not mean anything, but since you are in the status of a peeper and you do it not all your life, but only for a certain period of time, you can see much more from the outside than from the inside.
It is unlikely that Nora herself would have realized that after her husband's death, with the help of her removal, she learned to be truly independent, to put her opinion and desire above those imposed from outside or others accepted by her as her own, but the reader is quite capable of tracing these changes.
427.532 SRY