Nora Webster

Nora Webster was shortlisted for the 2015 Folio Prize. This heartbreaking new novel is from the author of Brooklyn.

"This is his best yet," declares the Spectator, Books of the Year.

"So rich, so observant, so moving," says the Observer, Books of the Year.

"A fine companion piece to his acclaimed novel, Brooklyn... Subtle and enthralling," remarks the Sunday Times, Books of the Year.

It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, and trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind. However, she is trapped by her circumstances, waiting for any chance to lift her beyond them. Slowly, through the gift of music and the power of friendship, she finds a glimmer of hope and a way of starting again.

As the dynamic of the family changes, she seems both fiercely self-possessed and a figure of great moral ambiguity, making her one of the most memorable heroines in contemporary fiction. The portrait painted in the following years is harrowing, piercingly insightful, always tender, and deeply true. Nora Webster is a novel that illuminates our own lives in a way that is rare in literature. Its humanity and compassion forge an unforgettable reading experience.

More praise for Nora Webster:

"If there is a more brilliant writer than Tóibín working today, I don't know who that would be," exclaims the Irish Times, Books of the Year.

"Tender, delicately oblique in its narration, and exquisitely well-written," praises The Times.

"A luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical," notes Jennifer Egan, The New York Times.

"Beautiful and heartbreaking," says the Independent.

"Arresting. As this novel movingly proposes, there are no ordinary women and no ordinary lives," according to the Irish Independent.

"The story is so expertly crafted that it achieves a luminous intensity, which lingers long in the memory," writes the Mail on Sunday.

"[A] love story and a love letter ... from one of Ireland's contemporary masters," observes the Observer.

"This novel is the real thing, rare and tremendous... It does everything we ought to ask of a great novel: that it respond to the fullness of our lives, be as large as life itself," claims the Guardian, Book of the Week.