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Introduced by Paul Clements.Ìý

This novel is set in small town Ireland in the late 1960s and is about Nora Webster whose husband, a teacher, has died leaving her with four children.

It is the story of how she restarts her life and copes with family changes. Written in a straightforward easy-to-read style – elegant yet simple – it is strong on characterisation, creating empathy.

The dialogue has a ring of authenticity and the author captures well the voices of theÌý people in a place where he grew up. He also draws on the memories of his father's death for this book.

Nora was left a house in Wexford and a holiday home. She did not want to keep the holiday home and in this paragraph Toibin is describing her reaction to being left a beach house which she just wants to be rid of it.

'What surprised her was the hardness of her resolve, how easy it seemed to turn her back on what she had loved, leave this house on the lane to the cliff for others to know, for others to come to in the summer and fill with different noises … Being released into the world of others seemed impossible; it was something she did not even want.Ìý How could she explain this to anyone who sought to know how she was or asked if she was getting over what happened?'

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The book was published in hardback in autumn 2014 and is now available in paperback.

Colm Toibin is a powerful writer and a prolific one too. As well as being a novelist and short story writer, he also writes non-fiction: history, biography, essays, criticism and travel. Nearly thirty years ago he wrote Walking Along the Border, published in 1987, about a journey along the Irish border when the Troubles were at their height.

This is a period piece book filled with stories of people who live along the border, looking at landscape and history.Ìý Another excellent travel book of his is Homage to Barcelona (1990) where he taught in 1975, and got to know the city well.ÌýÌý

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