Colm Tóibín: Nora Webster

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2015

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Colm Tóibín discusses his deeply personal story of a provincial Irishwoman who sets aside motherhood to grapple with grief.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.
0:03.8	Boots!
0:06.0	Where would we be without boos?
0:12.0	Where would we be without good?
0:15.0	No, Tenderberg.
0:16.0	It's a rhetorical question, sir.
0:20.0	But where would we need without books?
0:23.8	From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.
0:30.4	My guest today is Colum Tobin, and his new book is Nora Webster.
0:37.4	It's published by Scribner's. And he just said to me something so interesting.
0:44.6	You said of this book that this is a book that only five people would want to read. Now, why would you say that?
0:51.6	It's a widow in a provincial place in Ireland, and nothing happens to her over three years,
1:01.3	except things that are imperceptible to her, and maybe noticed by the reader, but not much.
1:10.5	So if you ask, well, does she get married again?
1:14.0	Does she run away?
1:15.5	Does her house gone fire?
1:17.4	Does she win the lottery?
1:19.1	Does she suddenly have a moment of absolute, you know, breakdown?
1:25.1	No, none of those things happens. And so novels like that are very
1:31.1	vulnerable because people really do want to know that their time reading the novel will
1:39.3	not be entirely wasted. Now, the novel, I think, begins proper on its dedication page. Would you read it, please?
1:50.5	Brit Tobin, 1921 to 2000. Nile Tobin, 1959 to 2004. So this is a book about the death of your mother and your brother, am I right?
	...

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