In Levels of Life, Julian Barnes's searching account of the death of his wife and the enduring ache of bereavement, the reader is warned that "every love story is a potential grief story".
Nora Webster, the eponymous heroine of Colm Tóibín's latest book [Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk], is quickly and cruelly made aware of this when her husband Maurice dies. Like Barnes's memoir which tracked "the lost-ness of the griefstruck", Tóibín's novel charts the blind flailing, stumbling and self-reclusiveness of the loved one left behind. Gradually, however, Maurice's widow finds the strength and determination to pick herself up and soldier on, and the reader gladly follows her emotional journey towards the pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel.
The events of the novel play out in a small Irish town in the late 1960s. Tóibín wastes little time in portraying his setting as a stifling community where everyone knows everyone else’s affairs. Nora is plagued by neighbours who heap tea and sympathy on her while sniffing for gossip. But nosy busybodies only temporarily impinge upon her mourning; intruding far longer and cutting much deeper is an onslaught of hard practicalities, not least caring for four children, particularly her young boys Conor and Donal. Much to the family’s disappointment, Nora sells their holiday home and takes on a full-time job to make ends meet. Great changes stem from blunt acceptance: “Her years of freedom had come to an end; it was as simple as that.”
For the bulk of the book, Tóibín shows Nora first bowed by grief then negotiating it. Genuine well-wishers coax her out of her shell and back into society. Her friend Phyllis takes her to a pub quiz and her Aunt Josie treats her to her first holiday abroad.
When Nora joins a trade union and answers back to hard taskmistress Francie Kavanagh at work, we see her toughening up; and when Conor’s teacher moves him down a class for no apparent reason and his mother retaliates by going on a one-woman crusade for justice, we witness the fury and the feistiness of a widow scorned. An object of pity becomes a force to be reckoned with.
Nora learns to protest but she also finds her voice, quite literally, through song. After singing lessons with a nun she makes a couple of disastrous public performances but her new-found resilience and love of music enable her to rise above her critics. What’s more, she realises this hobby heralds a breakthrough stage in the bereavement process: “It was not merely that Maurice had no ear for music, and that music was something they had never shared. It was the intensity of her time here; she was alone with herself in a place where he would never have followed her, even in death.”
Despite its weighty theme and its protagonist's inner struggles, Nora Webster starts out as a relatively gentle read, light on drama and incident. Early chapters are given over to nondescript caravan holidays, dips in the sea, and a day-trip to the bright lights and big smoke of Dublin, where Nora's sons are thrilled by trains, comics and escalators. But as the narrative unfolds we come upon pockets of tension, from the distant rumble of rioting in Derry and Belfast to Nora's relapses – her nadir being a conversation while heavily medicated and sleep-deprived with the ghost of her husband.
This brief, poignant scene speaks volumes about Nora’s poor mental state. Tóibín judiciously resists resurrecting Maurice again, either in the form of hallucinated visions in the present or restaged memories from the past, and thus avoids any descent into cloying sentimentality. The novel’s language is wonderfully controlled: spare and lucid yet muscular enough to convey both numbness and true depth of feeling; and as plaintive and beautiful as Nora’s arias. The literature of grief brims with vivid imagery, whether Hamlet’s “suits of woe” or D H Lawrence’s odour of chrysanthemums, but throughout his novel Tóibín plays it straight, delivering and convincing with trick-free prose.
In Tóibín's 2009-novel Brooklyn, his female lead Eilis Lacey must also cope with the death of a family member. Nora Webster, however, offers a fuller, more comprehensive picture of one woman's attempt to rebuild her life after tragedy. It is only towards the end, three years after her husband's death, that Nora can bring herself to throw away his clothes and burn his old letters.
Tóibín’s rich, affecting and occasionally powerful novel leaves us with a lasting impression of a family far from healed but also far from broken, coming to terms with their loss and feeling better equipped to navigate a “world filled with absences”.
Malcolm Forbes is a regular contributor to The Review.
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Company Profile
Name: Direct Debit System
Started: Sept 2017
Based: UAE with a subsidiary in the UK
Industry: FinTech
Funding: Undisclosed
Investors: Elaine Jones
Number of employees: 8
Kill
Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Starring: Lakshya, Tanya Maniktala, Ashish Vidyarthi, Harsh Chhaya, Raghav Juyal
Rating: 4.5/5
The specs: 2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio
Price, base: Dh198,300
Engine: 2.0L in-line four-cylinder
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 280hp @ 5,250rpm
Torque: 400Nm @ 2,250rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 7L / 100km
Bob Marley: One Love
Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Starring: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton
Rating: 2/5
Federer's 19 grand slam titles
Australian Open (5 titles) - 2004 bt Marat Safin; 2006 bt Marcos Baghdatis; 2007 bt Fernando Gonzalez; 2010 bt Andy Murray; 2017 bt Rafael Nadal
French Open (1 title) - 2009 bt Robin Soderling
Wimbledon (8 titles) - 2003 bt Mark Philippoussis; 2004 bt Andy Roddick; 2005 bt Andy Roddick; 2006 bt Rafael Nadal; 2007 bt Rafael Nadal; 2009 bt Andy Roddick; 2012 bt Andy Murray; 2017 bt Marin Cilic
US Open (5 titles) - 2004 bt Lleyton Hewitt; 2005 bt Andre Agassi; 2006 bt Andy Roddick; 2007 bt Novak Djokovic; 2008 bt Andy Murray
T20 World Cup Qualifier
October 18 – November 2
Opening fixtures
Friday, October 18
ICC Academy: 10am, Scotland v Singapore, 2.10pm, Netherlands v Kenya
Zayed Cricket Stadium: 2.10pm, Hong Kong v Ireland, 7.30pm, Oman v UAE
UAE squad
Ahmed Raza (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Rameez Shahzad, Darius D’Silva, Mohammed Usman, Mohammed Boota, Zawar Farid, Ghulam Shabber, Junaid Siddique, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Waheed Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Zahoor Khan
Players out: Mohammed Naveed, Shaiman Anwar, Qadeer Ahmed
Players in: Junaid Siddique, Darius D’Silva, Waheed Ahmed
The view from The National
The Iron Claw
Director: Sean Durkin
Starring: Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany, Lily James
Rating: 4/5
Company Profile
Founder: Omar Onsi
Launched: 2018
Employees: 35
Financing stage: Seed round ($12 million)
Investors: B&Y, Phoenician Funds, M1 Group, Shorooq Partners
How to register as a donor
1) Organ donors can register on the Hayat app, run by the Ministry of Health and Prevention
2) There are about 11,000 patients in the country in need of organ transplants
3) People must be over 21. Emiratis and residents can register.
4) The campaign uses the hashtag #donate_hope
MATCH INFO
Day 1 at Mount Maunganui
England 241-4
Denly 74, Stokes 67 not out, De Grandhomme 2-28
New Zealand
Yet to bat
COMPANY PROFILE
Company: Sideup
Started: 2019
Founder: Waleed Rashed
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Industry: technology, e-commerce
Funds raised so far: $1.2 million
Investors: Launch Africa VC, 500 Global, Riyadh Angels, Alex Angels, Al Tuwaijri Fund and Saudi angel investor Faisal Al Abdulsalam
Company Profile
Company name: Cargoz
Date started: January 2022
Founders: Premlal Pullisserry and Lijo Antony
Based: Dubai
Number of staff: 30
Investment stage: Seed
SPECS
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
More from Neighbourhood Watch
US PGA Championship in numbers
1 Joost Luiten produced a memorable hole in one at the par-three fourth in the first round.
2 To date, the only two players to win the PGA Championship after winning the week before are Rory McIlroy (2014 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational) and Tiger Woods (2007, WGC-Bridgestone Invitational). Hideki Matsuyama or Chris Stroud could have made it three.
3 Number of seasons without a major for McIlroy, who finished in a tie for 22nd.
4 Louis Oosthuizen has now finished second in all four of the game's major championships.
5 In the fifth hole of the final round, McIlroy holed his longest putt of the week - from 16ft 8in - for birdie.
6 For the sixth successive year, play was disrupted by bad weather with a delay of one hour and 43 minutes on Friday.
7 Seven under par (64) was the best round of the week, shot by Matsuyama and Francesco Molinari on Day 2.
8 Number of shots taken by Jason Day on the 18th hole in round three after a risky recovery shot backfired.
9 Jon Rahm's age in months the last time Phil Mickelson missed the cut in the US PGA, in 1995.
10 Jimmy Walker's opening round as defending champion was a 10-over-par 81.
11 The par-four 11th coincidentally ranked as the 11th hardest hole overall with a scoring average of 4.192.
12 Paul Casey was a combined 12 under par for his first round in this year's majors.
13 The average world ranking of the last 13 PGA winners before this week was 25. Kevin Kisner began the week ranked 25th.
14 The world ranking of Justin Thomas before his victory.
15 Of the top 15 players after 54 holes, only Oosthuizen had previously won a major.
16 The par-four 16th marks the start of Quail Hollow's so-called "Green Mile" of finishing holes, some of the toughest in golf.
17 The first round scoring average of the last 17 major champions was 67.2. Kisner and Thorbjorn Olesen shot 67 on day one at Quail Hollow.
18 For the first time in 18 majors, the eventual winner was over par after round one (Thomas shot 73).
RESULTS
9pm: Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (Dirt) 2,000m
Winner: Mubhir Al Ain, Antonio Fresu (jockey), Ahmed Al Mehairbi (trainer)
9.30pm: Handicap (TB) Dh70,000 (D) 2,000m
Winner: Exciting Days, Oscar Chavez, Doug Watson
10pm: Al Ain Cup – Prestige (PA) Dh100,000 (D) 2,000m
Winner: Suny Du Loup, Marcelino Rodrigues, Hamad Al Marar
10.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (D) 1,800m
Winner: Jafar Des Arnets, Oscar Chavez, Ahmed Al Mehairbi
11pm: Wathba Stallions Cup – Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 (D) 1,600m
Winner: Taj Al Izz, Richard Mullen, Ibrahim Al Hadhrami
11.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (D) 1,400m
Winner: Majdy, Antonio Fresu, Jean de Roualle
12am: Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (D) 1,400m
Winner: Hamloola, Sam Hitchcott, Salem Al Ketbi
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 680hp at 6,000rpm
Torque: 800Nm at 2,750-6,000rpm
Transmission: Rear-mounted eight-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 13.6L/100km
On sale: Orderbook open; deliveries start end of year
Price: From Dh970,000
COMPANY PROFILE
Company: Eco Way
Started: December 2023
Founder: Ivan Kroshnyi
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Electric vehicles
Investors: Bootstrapped with undisclosed funding. Looking to raise funds from outside
THE SPECS
Aston Martin Rapide AMR
Engine: 6.0-litre V12
Transmission: Touchtronic III eight-speed automatic
Power: 595bhp
Torque: 630Nm
Price: Dh999,563
Sarfira
Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal
Rating: 2/5