Taking place in a small town, Enniscorthy, in Southeast Ireland in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Nora Webster is navigating life after her husband has died. She’s in her 40’s with two young boys at home and two older daughters away at school and work. She has little income, she’s a private person in a small town where people come calling day and night to offer condolences, and she seems unaware of how much her boys are grieving their father as no one is able to talk about it.

We experience events and feelings through Nora, with no explication or commentary from the author, so it feels subtle and even cryptic in its unfolding. Her husband died young, she had to care for him, and that’s about all we get. Yet, this tragedy affects everything else in her life: how she’ll pay bills, where the boys will go to school, whether she’ll return to work after years away, how she’ll interact with friends and family when Maurice was clearly the more social one. 

At times she seems completely unaware of her boys’ needs, especially Donal, the older one who’s quiet and sensitive—often withdrawn and upset—and has developed a stutter. Nora seems to hope this behavior will all vanish at some point. But sometimes she displays empathy that we don’t expect, like she has hardened herself and but wants to soften herself and doesn’t quite know how to do it. 

I like Toibin’s writing style in its simplicity of language and its suggestion that there’s more happening than the words on the page. Like a hidden underlayer, we have to work to know Nora but we can’t help but quietly cheer her on as she figures out how to move forward as a single working mother who eventually even sees a bit of freedom in some small redecorating projects. 

The writing reminds me of Irish writer, Claire Keegan whose work is much shorter. When not much happens in a plot and book’s power is primarily in its subtleties of conversation and actions, then I think it should be more like a novella. At almost 400 pages, this was too long to maintain the level of interest in the  day to day unfolding of Nora’s life. 

 I felt guilty for skim reading the last third because each sentence offers subtle power but after awhile, it also felt tiresome. I’m not familiar with the author’s previous books but Brooklyn and The Master seem to be highly recommended.