It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking
after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husb
and. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kin
d, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting for any chance which wil
l lift her beyond them. Slowly, through the gift of music and the power of frien
dship, she finds a glimmer of hope and a way of starting again. As the dynamic o
f the family changes, she seems both fiercely self-possessed but also a figure o
f great moral ambiguity, making her one of the most memorable heroines in contem
porary fiction. The portrait that is painted in the years that follow is harrowi
ng, piercingly insightful, always tender and deeply true. Colm Toibin's Nora is
a character as resonant as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary and Nora Webster is a
novel that illuminates our own lives in a way that is rare in literature.
