"If Meredith Grey served in Vietnam and came home…this would be her story."

"Most of us lead lives of quiet desperation, knocked about every so often by rude shocks or lifted up by brief, brilliant joys. But our quotidian troubles and triumphs rarely create ripples beyond our own little ponds.

As readers, we often gravitate toward lives played out on a grander scale—adventures, dalliances, crimes, and misdemeanors far more colorful than our own. But reader, if you haven’t experienced the transcendent storytelling of Ireland’s Colm Tóibín, you may not know what it’s like to feel the earth tilt with the most subtle of emotional tremors.

The story unfolds in rural County Wexford in 1969. Nora Webster, mother of four, is mourning the recent death of her husband, Maurice. She hasn’t worked outside the home in twenty-five years, has neither savings nor higher education and cannot look to extended family to support her, her two daughters pursuing University, or the two boys still at home. The outlook is grim.

She cherished her husband, and her anguish, though closely guarded, is breathtaking. But grief has coated Nora’s emotions with a thin sheen of ice. She longs to escape the endless parade of neighborhood mourners, to simply be left in peace. She regards her young sons, Donal and Conor, with a clinician’s distance and her older daughters, Aine and Fiona, with cautious exasperation. It occurs to her belatedly that she did not once visit or call the boys in the two months they stayed with an aunt while she remained at Maurice’s bedside. She accepts her neglect as a fact, but her remorse is slow to come.

Nora’s reawakening is the found treasure in this elegant, softly spiritual story. Tóibín writes without judgment. His Nora is fierce, stronger than she has any idea of or experience with, but it takes her time to figure out how to straighten her formidable backbone. She also must learn how to accept and adapt to others�� grief, namely that of her children, for she is a jealous guardian of her husband’s memory and love.

There are so many rich moments that show a woman coming into her own: the book’s opening scenes when Nora decides to sell the family’s modest summer home; the simple acts of having her hair done in a new style, purchasing a hi-fi, or deciding to update the “back room�� where the family spends most of its time. Nora deftly steers her way through office politics, using her connections and the sympathy her husband’s death elicits to secure her position at the largest business in town, and she rediscovers her singing voice, which makes a lovely metaphor for the discovery of her voice as a grown, independent woman. Her response to Donal’s meltdown when he is denied access to a television to watch the moon landing, her decision not to rescue him from the boarding school where he is so miserable, and her grudging respect for her daughters show a mother relearning compassion.

There are cultural touchstones that keep the reader grounded in place and time, reminding us that just as Nora is awakening to her independence and power, so too is Ireland wrestling with its political and cultural boundaries. The Troubles of early 1970s Ireland, where violence erupts across the border and closer to home, arrive on the Webster’s doorstep in ways you don’t expect from this portrayal of anonymous domestic life.

Nora Webster caused me to reflect on another Nora who entered my literary life this year: Nora Eldridge from Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs. What emotional bookends they make to my reading year: one Nora, driven by lust and longing into a state of rage and self-loathing; the other, slowly awakening to her own keen possibilities. Both Noras are compelling, their stories crafted by superb writers. And each is a reminder that the quiet lives, the secret lives, are often the most astonishing of all.

I recall what Tóibín said about his writing after the publication of his last novel, The Testament of Mary. He stated that he writes the silence; the space between words. God, but I love that. For Tóibín is a master of the quiet dramas that unfold in kitchens and bedrooms, in back offices, in church naves and cafés. He takes the ordinary, and with sublime writing and rich characters, changes our way of perceiving the world.
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"Η Νόρα Γουέμπστερ είναι νοικοκυρά και μητέρα τεσσάρων παιδιών σε μια μικρή επαρχιακή πόλη της Ιρλανδίας στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 60. Προσπαθεί να ξαναχτίσει τη ζωή της μετά το χαμό του άνδρα της, προσφιλούς δασκάλου στην ευρύτερη κοινότητα. Όλος της ο κόσμος καταρρέει την ίδια στιγμή που παραμένει απελπιστικά ίδιος. Πρέπει να επαναπροσδιορίσει τον εαυτό της μέσα σε μια μίζερη καθημερινότητα, στην οποία οι αποφάσεις της οριοθετούνται από το τι θα πει ο μικρόκοσμός της, πόσο αξιοπρεπής πρέπει να δείχνει μέσα στο πένθος της, πόσο δυνατή είναι να προχωρήσει, όταν τα πάντα και οι πάντες της υπενθυμίζουν την απώλεια.

Τίποτε δραματικό δε συμβαίνει στο βιβλίο, όμως, ο Τόιμπιν αποδεικνύεται για άλλη μια φορά μεγάλος τεχνίτης και παρουσιάζει κάθε μέρα αυτής της τόσο μικρής, αλλά και τόσο μεγάλης ηρωίδας ως μια αέναη επανάληψη, σε κάθε σελίδα, ωστόσο, σε κάθε βήμα της ηρωίδας του, σε κάθε σωστή ή λάθος απόφαση και κάθε πισωγύρισμα τη φέρνει όλο και πιο κοντά στον επαναπροσδιορισμό της και μια εσωτερική χειραφέτηση που έρχεται οργανικά, μέσα από την αμείλικτη σοφία του χρόνου.

Με μια απόλυτα ελεγχόμενη, σχεδόν αποστασιοποιημένη αφήγηση, ο Τόιμπιν μετουσιώνει τα αυτοβιογραφικά στοιχεία της ζωής της μητέρας του σε μια συναρπαστική λογοτεχνία που ξέρει να εκτιμά και να αναδεικνύει τις σιωπές, τις ανεπαίσθητες αλλαγές και τις αμφίθυμες ψυχολογικές μεταπτώσεις, ταυτόχρονα, όμως, απεικονίζει τόσο γλαφυρά τη ζωή στην Ιρλανδία και τις πολιτικές αναταράξεις λίγο πριν την κορύφωση τους. Ένα ακόμα μεγάλο έργο ενός μεγάλου συγγραφέα."