Nora Webster: a Novel

            A story about the recently widowed Nora Webster, set in a small town in Ireland during the late 1960s and early ‘70s, shows us how Nora and her family adjust to life without Maurice, her husband and their father. The book is written by Colm Toibin (pronounced Cullum Toe-bean), who also wrote the novel Brooklyn.

            Nora lost the love of her life when Maurice passed away after a short illness. Wanting to hide away to mourn privately, and irritable because of the number of condolence calls paid to her, Nora tries to find the will to continue on. But her children and other relatives also miss Maurice and Nora is forced to cope with this too. Eventually, she is able to open up to renewing and expanding on her relationships with family and forms friendships within the community. Nora returns to work, becomes an active participant in political discussions, joins a music listening club, and begins singing lessons. Although Nora’s recovery is not quick nor painless, after three years we see that she has embraced her new skills and relishes her new freedoms, ending the novel on a positive note.

Transatlantic

            This novel is written by Colum McCann, a critically acclaimed author who was born in Ireland and now resides in New York City. The story includes elements of historical fiction and family saga. The reader travels back and forth through the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries (not in chronological order), and from Ireland, the United States, and Canada, to explore the thoughts and actions of both historical and fictional individuals.

            The historical figures are: Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth century American abolitionist and former slave; John Alcock and Teddy Brown, two British airmen who in 1919 won the contest to be the first to fly from North America to Great Britain or Ireland within 72 hours; and Senator George Mitchell, who was an integral contributor to the peace settlement in Northern Ireland during the late 1990s. These four men are seen to interact with four fictional characters, all women from the same family – great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and daughter – during five different time periods. By the end of the novel, we are impressed by the inner strength of all of the characters as they cope with their own troubles, as well as with the historical “Troubles” of Northern Ireland.

Brooklyn: a Novel

           Both a coming-of-age novel and an immigrant’s tale, Brooklyn: a Novel, written by Colm Toibin, tells the story of Eilis, a young Irish woman who is intelligent yet inexperienced in the ways of the world. We meet Eilis first in Enniscorthy, Ireland, during the early 1950s, where she lives with her widowed mother and her outgoing elder sister Rose. Jobs are hard to find in Ireland; Eilis’ brothers have left the country to work in England. Rose contacts Father Flood, an Irish priest working in Brooklyn and arrangements are made for Eilis to get a job there. The author portrays Eilis as a submissive daughter and sister, afraid to leave her home for the unknown yet willing to do so because it is expected of her.

            As Eilis embarks on her journey across the ocean to her new life in Brooklyn, she rides a roller coaster of new experiences that include independence, adjustment to a new culture, and romance. She meets Tony who comes from a warm Italian family, much different from her own. She attends Brooklyn College, earns a certificate in bookkeeping and obtains the promise of a bookkeeping position from her current employer. Her life is going well; then, tragedy strikes. Eilis is notified that her sister Rose has died. At first bereft and then guilt-ridden when her brother sends a letter urging her to go to Ireland to look after their mother, Eilis and Tony confer and together decide that she will visit her mother for a short while and then return to Brooklyn to Tony and her new life. Tony insists that Eilis marry him in a civil ceremony before leaving for Ireland, to be followed by a church wedding when she returns.

            Once in Ireland, Eilis falls into a routine of caring for her mother, meeting up with friends and garnering the interest of a young man who she previously thought to be ill-mannered. Also, she is offered a job at the company where Rose worked. Never having told her mother that she was going with a young man in Brooklyn, Eilis is unable to tell her that she has married. It looks as though she could settle into life in Ireland again, although it would be a deceitful choice. But then a chance encounter with an old employer shocks Eilis into honesty, confessing to her mother about Tony and beginning her journey back home the next day.