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Nora Webster: A Novel
- Narrated by: Fiona Shaw
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
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Great Story Great Narration
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Publisher's summary
2015 Audie Award Finalist for Literary Fiction
From one of contemporary literature's best-selling, critically acclaimed and beloved authors, a magnificent new novel set in Ireland, about a fiercely compelling young widow and mother of four, navigating grief and fear, struggling for hope.
Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín's superb seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at 40, 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 drawn back into it. Wounded, 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 empathy and kindness, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven - herself.
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- By: Kathleen McGurl
- Narrated by: Melanie MacHugh
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s the summer of 1919, and Ellen O’Brien has her whole life ahead of her. Young, in love and leaving home for her first job, the future seems full of shining possibility. But war is brewing, and before long, Ellen and everyone around her are swept up by it. As Ireland is torn apart by the turmoil, Ellen finds herself facing the ultimate test of love and loyalty. A hundred years later and Clare Farrell has inherited a dilapidated old farmhouse in County Meath.
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The Forgotten Secret
- By Amazon Customer on 08-31-20
By: Kathleen McGurl
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Maeve's Times
- In Her Own Words
- By: Maeve Binchy
- Narrated by: Kate Binchy
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.
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A GLIMPSE THROUGH MAEVE'S LOOKING GLASS
- By jstrfic on 08-08-17
By: Maeve Binchy
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The Testament of Gideon Mack
- By: James Robertson
- Narrated by: Tom Cotcher
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband, and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies - until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan.
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Fantastic
- By Christopher on 07-06-08
By: James Robertson
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Under Heaven's Shining Stars
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Alan Smyth
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
For three young boys, Liam, Patrick, and Hugo, life in Ireland of the 1960s proves to be both idyllic and flawed. Living in close proximity but leading vastly different lives, the bonds of friendship bind these young men as they grow, dream, and navigate the storms of youth.
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A Modern Irish Catholic Tale
- By Jane Meddaugh on 12-19-20
By: Jean Grainger
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A Narrow Door
- By: Joanne Harris
- Narrated by: Alex Kingston, Steven Pacey
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely 40, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.
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Optional heading
- By TanyaB on 01-17-22
By: Joanne Harris
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The Heart's Invisible Furies
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
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Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
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Half a Lifelong Romance
- A Novel
- By: Eileen Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Manzhen is a young worker in a Shanghai factory where she meets Shijun, the son of wealthy merchants. Despite family complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together - until circumstances force them apart. When they are reunited after many years, can they start their relationship again? Or is it destined to be the romance of only half a lifetime?
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super
- By Marcus Aurelius on 10-05-17
By: Eileen Chang
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Shadow of a Century
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.
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Loved this book!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-14-20
By: Jean Grainger
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Girl Alone
- By: Cathy Glass
- Narrated by: Denica Fairman
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Aged nine Joss came home from school to discover her father's suicide. She's never got over it. This is the true story of Joss, 13 who is angry and out of control. At the age of nine, Joss finds her father's dead body. He has committed suicide. Then more recently her mother remarries and Joss bitterly resents her step-father who abuses her mentally and physically.
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Great!
- By Lexi on 06-22-18
By: Cathy Glass
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Cold Hand in Mine
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ("Pages from a Young Girl's Journal") but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.
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Aickman is unique
- By Stark on 08-19-23
By: Robert Aickman
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Loved every word
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The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice.
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Terrific listening experience
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A Guest at the Feast
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“IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS.” So begins Colm Tóibín’s fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for cancer. Tóibín survives, but he has entered, as he says, “the age of one ball.” Tóibín describes his education by priests, several of whom were condemned years later for abuse. He writes about Irish history and literature, and about the long, tragic journey toward legal and social acceptance of homosexuality. A Guest at the Feast is both an intimate encounter with a creative artist and a glorious celebration of writing.
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Excellent writing and interesting insights.
- By Tom on 02-11-24
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In 1950, Katherine Proctor leaves Ireland for Barcelona, determined to escape her family and become a painter. There she meets Miguel, an anarchist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and begins to build a life with him. But Katherine cannot escape her past, as Michael Graves, a fellow Irish émigré in Spain, forces her to reexamine all her relationships: to her lover, her art, and the homeland she only thought she knew. The South is a novel of classic themes - of art and exile, and of the seemingly irreconcilable yearnings for love and freedom - to which Colm Tóibín brings a new, passionate sensitivity.
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Waste of time
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Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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Eminently re-readable
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By: Colm Toibin
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The Empty Family
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In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family, Colm Tibn delineates with a tender and unique sensibility, lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals often willingly cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town, to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence, each of Tibn's stories manage to contain whole worlds.
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Love, Loss, and Longing
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New Ways to Kill Your Mother
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In a brilliant, nuanced, and wholly original collection of essays, the best-selling and award-winning author of Brooklyn and The Empty Family offers a fascinating exploration of famous writers’ relationships to their families and their work.From Jane Austen’s aunts to Tennessee Williams’s mentally ill sister, the impact of intimate family dynamics can be seen in many of literature’s greatest works. In New Ways to Kill Your Mother, Colm Tóibín traces and interprets those family ties.
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A Literary Box of Chocolates
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Mothers and Sons
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This beautifully written, intensely intimate collection explores a subject of nearly universal experience: the psychological push and pull between a mother and a son.
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Good Reader, Odd Endings
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The Shortest Day
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During the winter solstice, on the shortest day and longest night of the year, the ancient burial chamber at Newgrange is empowered. Its mystifying source is a haunting tale told by locals. Professor O’Kelly believes an archaeologist’s job is to make known only what can be proved. He is undeterred by ghost stories, idle speculation, and caution. Much to the chagrin of the living souls in County Meath. As well as those entombed in the sacred darkness of Newgrange itself. They’re determined to protect the secret of the light, guarded for more than 5,000 years.
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interesting short!
- By Barbara S on 02-05-24
By: Colm Tóibín
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The Paying Guests
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It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.
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Difference of Opinion
- By Mel on 12-17-14
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Roman Stories
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The first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth. Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical—is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories.
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Loved it!
- By linda on 11-21-23
By: Jhumpa Lahiri, and others
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Old God's Time
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Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a white Victorian Castle in Dalkey overlooking the sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, but his peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask questions about a decades-old case. A traumatic case which Tom never quite came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother and family who move in next door, a woman on the run from her own troubles. And what of Tom’s family, his wife June, and their two children?
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Boring and self conscious
- By Leah on 06-25-23
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A Grandmother Begins the Story
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Carter is a young mother, recently separated. She is curious, angry, and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means. Allie, Carter's mother, is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born, and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother. Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the Afterlife. And Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons before the fire inside burns her up, wih the thelp of the sister she lost but has never been without.
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Wrapped up in story
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What listeners say about Nora Webster: A Novel
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sara
- 12-13-15
Contrived & Overreaching
I had high expectations for this book and stuck with it hoping that it would be worth it in the end. To me, it is a sadly strange story. The writing and action are often overwhelmingly vague and yet at the same time minutely precise. Almost like a randomly focused and then unfocused camera lens. A confusing mix.
Part of me wonders about this "personal exploration" of a woman--from the woman's point of view--written by a man. I mean, you can study sea lions and be an absolute expert in the field but in the end you will never actually "be" a sea lion. You will never understand sea lion-ness. I think the same thing goes when it comes to this book. Toibin will never be a woman and doesn't seem to know what women really think and feel beyond assumptions. I know--I know--each woman is different you say, but something was missing with the whole picture. I am not saying that men can't write about women. I am saying on this occasion--from this context--for me it didn't work. And no, I don't think women are like sea lions--it was just an example.
In the end it all felt remote. Very little of the action and interpretation of the action and behavior rings true or sounds plausible. Plus it's very sad and depressing to boot. Listen with caution.
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41 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Doggy Bird
- 10-16-14
Very moving portrait, interesting times
I really enjoyed this book which is the first one I have read by Colm Toibin. I also thought the narration was, for the most part, quite good. The only complaint I have about the narration is that a few of the characterizations were a bit over the top - almost cartoonish in tone. In the worst case the character in the book is supposed to be a mean and nasty boss at work and the vocal characterization approached the level of the wicked witch of the west. For the greater part of the book the narrator enhanced the story and did a great deal to locate the novel in place and time. It is a small flaw but a noticeable one.
The story takes place in a small town in Ireland. It is a narrowly focused portrait of a woman who has lost her husband, and it takes place in the three years following that loss. The lens of the story opens to take in a bit of the era -1969 and the years immediately following, when the troubles between the Catholics and the Protestants exploded. Otherwise, only the technology of the period distinguishes the setting - record players and cars are still luxuries and not everyone has a telephone.
The writing is very beautiful although much of the story is sad. Each sentence, each word of the book seems specifically chosen - nothing is extra - no descriptions, nothing sloppy. The prose is precise and spare and much of what happens is revealed in dialogue. The main character, Nora Webster, is not the most likable of heroines. She is thoughtful and not sentimental, but a concerned and caring mother despite not making choices that are universally applauded. During her husband's terminal illness, which occurs before the opening of the story, she left the children with her two sisters for quite a while, and she does not question that decision even as she sees the impact it has had on at least one of her children. It is clear that her marriage was the center of her emotional life. Throughout the book much of what she decides is not approved of by those around her, and she is a sort of prickly character who becomes more confident and independent over time.
The movement in the story is from about six months after her husband's death until 3 years later and traces the passage of her life from grief, resentment and loss towards her redefinition as she navigates parenthood alone and discovers what motivates and defines her in the absence of the circumstances of her younger married self. Though much of what happens in the novel is small the questions addressed by the story - what matters and how to live - are very large ones.
I was very moved by this book, by the beauty of the prose and by the minute details which made the story resonate for me. I also think despite the flaws I mentioned earlier regarding the narration that the audio version is very powerful in transmitting the character's movement over time. I highly recommend this book for serious readers who value beautiful writing.
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19 people found this helpful
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- Molly-o
- 11-11-14
What a gift!
I don't remember how I found this book, but it popped into my life and, as soon as I finished it, I started it all over again. I know now that I have many other Toibin books that will sustain me through the dark PNWest winter which makes me very happy.
First of all, the narration on this is phenomenal. I had thought it was more than one person until I went back to check. Fiona Shaw makes this novel come alive and Colm Toibin gives her a lot to work with - beautifully drawn characters, simple but compelling story line and an undercurrent of sorrow turning to coping turning to joy. I loved it.
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- Susan Finch
- 11-06-14
Couldn't finish it, I just didn't care
Would you try another book from Colm Toibin and/or Fiona Shaw?
Fiona Shaw was an excellent narrator. The problem was the story. It was boring and depressing and I never felt compelled to care about Nora. I finally just gave up. I gave it three stars only because he narration was good.
Would you ever listen to anything by Colm Toibin again?
I might, some reviews say his other books are much better but then many reviewers loved this book. People praise the excellent writing. I guess I am a reader that is more concerned with the story. Everyone likes something different. This just wasn't for me.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disappointment!
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- KP
- 03-17-17
There's no THERE there...
This was certainly not the most exciting book in the world. Not until I listened to The Guardian, March 29, 2016, Books Podcast did I gained appreciation for what Colm Toibin was trying to do in this book. My review is based on what I learned from that podcast. I recommend the Podcast, if not the book :)
Nora Webster was loosely based on Toibin’s mother and his family. Nora was not a very demonstrative or affectionate mom – or person in general. Evidently Toibin’s real mother talked a lot more. He didn’t want to put all the chatting in the book because he thought all that would get in the way of what was quietly happening in the development of her character. Toibin and his brother and mom actually watched the movies Gaslight and Lost Horizons, as they did in the book – sharing some moments of what passed for closeness with their mom.
He wanted to show a life in the shadows… “provincial life”… like Madame Bovary… with no Madame and no Bovary. He wanted the main character to not really know or understand how or if she was getting better after the death of her husband -- and the reader wouldn’t know either. Change just happens slowly and obscurely to Nora, and to us, the readers, the awareness of change is just as slow.
Toibin talked about other art forms besides writing. For example, he talked about Cezanne with his big brush strokes like sentences. This new movement in painting influenced writers like Hemingway. James Joyce and other writers were influenced more by music and their writing demonstrates that, according to Toibin.
One of Toibin’s most famous books is Brooklyn, as in the Oscar winning movie. I didn’t realize that Nick Hornby was the screenwriter for that movie. Toibin really appreciated how Hornby was able to find the core story of a young girl, Ellis, leaving Ireland and finding love - the emotional story of one person - and he allowed that to stand for everyone else. But he didn’t try to make it more grand than that simple story.
What about turning Nora Webster into a movie? According to Toibin, it would need a different sort of screen writer or approach since it doesn’t have the crossing of the Atlantic as a grand divide or grand idea. Ingmar Bergman could have done it.
Nora Webster and The Testament of Mary, another of Toibin’s books, were both about isolated women. Many things were withheld from them. Toibin says that it matters that Nora is a woman because she’s much more aware of being an outcast and of people not wanting to be around her.
The burning of her husband’s letters at the end of the book was one of the most dramatic things that happened. Toibin said when his mother died, the letters were gone and they had been there in a box, just like in the book. SO, he imagined that they had to have been burned. The box was empty. He said he NEEDED something for the book; he needed something with which to finish it off, so he raided some very difficult material. By burning the letters, Nora had freed herself. It had been in her, and this is the way it emerges. These were very private things that he put in the book.
SO, listening to the podcast definitely helped me appreciate this book a lot more, but… overall, well, I’ll stick with the 3 stars .
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- Autodidact
- 08-15-17
beautiful and simple
The description of a woman's life unfolding after being suddenly widowed. The circumscription of a small Irish town in the 1970's and the many subtle ways we watch her grow into herself as an individual, with family yet, as we all are, alone.
Beautiful. This book puts me in mind of the many novels by Edna O'Brian.
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- Robin A. Pearl
- 01-29-15
Did not enjoy
Found it very dull. Barely finished. I should have felt more moved by her plight. Perhaps people in Ireland could relate more to the character.
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- David P
- 08-04-20
A Beautiful, Subtle Novel
I read the vast majority of this novel on the page and listened to about 15% of it while driving. It's a psychologically rich portrait of a widow coping with her grief and gradually learning to live on her own. Toibin is a spellbinding writer. He rarely describes things or people in great detail, but the little he gives you brings the characters to life vividly.
There's no plot to speak of, so if you need that, it's not for you. It's more like a series of events in Nora's life for a few years after her husband's death. Even so, there's something gripping about the simple moments, the small triumphs, and the occasional conflicts. You come away with a wonderful sense of what life was like in Ireland in the late 60's--the lack of phones in many households, the concerns about the Troubles in the north, the beauty and oppressiveness of life in small communities.
By the end, I found Nora's quiet moves toward becoming her own person (which do not--hurrah!--involve meeting another man) profoundly moving and completely satisfying. Fiona Shaw is a GREAT narrator.
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- John P. Hunt
- 11-08-14
"Snora" Webster
This book failed to grab my attention. Nora's journey from the death of her husband to becoming a xenophobic shut is not interesting.
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- susan von schlegell
- 11-02-14
Power of a great reader
Would you listen to Nora Webster: A Novel again? Why?
The novel is beautifully written. A simple clear plot. Fiona Shaw 's superb reading nails it.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
I was sorry to reach the end.
What does Fiona Shaw bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The mind set of a woman in Ireland of the 1970s. Fiona Shaw becomes Nora.
Who was the most memorable character of Nora Webster: A Novel and why?
Nora. Because she finds her own voice (singing and otherwise) at the same time she remains bound to her children
Any additional comments?
The combination of Shaw and Toibin shows the importance of a reader to the listening experience.
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