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Book Cover for: Nora Webster, Colm Toibin

Nora Webster

Colm Toibin

Reader Score

74%

74% of readers

recommend this book

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).

Book Details

  • Publisher: Scribner Book Company
  • Publish Date: Jun 2nd, 2015
  • Pages: 400
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.20in - 1.10in - 0.75lb
  • EAN: 9781439170939
  • Categories: LiteraryFamily Life - GeneralWomen

About the Author

Toibin, Colm: - Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah's Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022-2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He was shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize. He was also awarded the Bodley Medal, the Würth Prize for European Literature, and the Prix Femina spécial for his body of work.

Praise for this book

"Fascinating... Revelatory... More thoughtful than Emma Bovary and less self-destructive, in the end far and away a better parent than the doomed Anna Karenina for all the latter's dramatic posturing, Nora Webster is easily as memorable as either-and far more believable. To say more would spoil a masterful- and unforgettable-novel."