Throughout much of this intense character study by Colm Toibin, which takes place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nora Webster observes the niceties – common, traditional actions which give her a way to deal with reality without thinking too much. Here, the author controls our perceptions of Nora, confident that the reader will be able to understand Nora simply by observing her in her life. Through vibrant, often touching, scenes in which the characters speak and interact, seemingly on their own, Toibin draws in the reader so subtly that one never feels manipulated, the quiet development resembling the character of Nora herself – reserved, unassertive, and uncertain about the future. She is feeling strong and confident by the time Bloody Sunday occurs in Derry, where twenty-six unarmed Catholic civilians are killed during a demonstration. The burning of the British Embassy in Dublin in 1972 takes place a few days later, in retaliation. Generational differences are highlighted by the activities of Nora’s daughter Aine, who is deeply involved in these political causes and seemingly has no fear. A brilliant character study of a woman trying to become whole.
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By now, most people who are here reading this review have already read at least one of the first two books in the “Neapolitan trilogy” by Elena Ferrante, of which this is the third novel. (A fourth entry in the series is expected now in 2015). Dramatic and intense, these novels read like operatic librettos, with two main characters, young girls from Naples who meet as children, sharing their tumultuous childhoods, and then, in succeeding novels, their teenage and adult lives. Despite their early closeness, the girls move in completely different directions as they get older, living out their different goals and objectives, but remaining friends through the traumas and uncertainties of their early years and the various political movements in which may have been caught up as young adults. The brighter girl, Lila, or Lina, Cerullo, is not allowed to continue the education which would have allowed her to take advantage of her immense intellect, instead marrying as a teenager. Her less creative but competent and organized friend, Elena, also a good student and with a supportive family, goes on to college and eventually becomes a writer. Though she has promised in the past that she will not betray Lila by writing about their own tangled history, Elena appears to be the author of this novel, which begins when both women are in their sixties (probably in the late 1960s through mid-1970s), a time in which Elena is successful and living elsewhere, and Lila has disappeared from Naples, leaving behind her son Gennaro (Rino) as Elena’s only contact.
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In his second novel of what appears to be the beginning of a series, Neapolitan author Diego De Silva reintroduces hapless attorney Vincenzo Malinconico, a man lacking in ambition, commitment, and self-awareness. Vincenzo has managed to stay out of the public eye, since his last outing, leading a conveniently quiet, though not necessarily satisfying, life. His wife, a psychologist, left him for another man more than two years ago, and he has had his own relationships, the most recent of which, with a gorgeous fellow-attorney, is currently on the rocks. Not surprisingly, given his lack of ambition, his caseload is almost non-existent: “I’m not a tough guy,” he admits. “If you want to know the truth, I doubt I’ve ever made a real decision in my whole life…I’m not a multiple-options kind of guy, really.” His life changes on a simple trip to the supermarket, where the engineer friend of a former client approaches him and speaks to him, asking Vincenzo, out of the blue, if he represents criminal cases. Engineer Romulo Sesti Orfeo suddenly warns him that something is about to happen. A hostage situation in the supermarket then ensues, and Vincenzo is the only only one who can defuse the situation. Funny, satiric.
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South African author Damon Galgut’s fictionalized biography of author E. M. Forster (1879 – 1970), known as Morgan, takes a different approach from non-fictional biographies, synthesizing all the author’s research into the character of Forster and then journeying inside his mind, ultimately allowing “Forster” to tell his own story. As the openly gay Galgut asserts throughout this novel, Forster’s most significant difficulty in his personal life and in his writing seems to have been in reconciling his homosexuality with the rest of his life so that he could live and love fully on all levels. During Forster’s most prolific years as a novelist, 1908 – 1924, “minorite” activities were almost universally hidden, not just frowned upon by society, but rejected as aberrant behavior.
Strict codes of behavior governed how people interacted within various social classes, and the need to conform allowed little room for any kind of social experimentation and led to the ostracism of those who were “different.” How “minorites,” in particular, came to terms with their essential natures and were able to live within this restricted society becomes a major theme of this novel.
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In this consummately Irish novel, Johnsey, a shy innocent who has adored his strong, assertive da, is devastated by his father’s death, and when his mother is so hard hit by the death that she herself becomes withdrawn, Johnsey’s minimal support system, such as it was, ceases completely to exist. Always insecure, he sometimes thinks about the past, even as he is bullied unmercifully, before and after school, by Eugene Penrose, “a dole boy,” and some of the other thugs in his school. At one point, he remembers hearing his father say “he was a grand quiet boy” to Mother when he thought Johnsey couldn’t hear them talking. Mother must have been giving out about him being a gom and Daddy was defending him. He heard the fondness in Daddy’s voice. “But you’d have fondness for an auld eejit of a crossbred pup that should have been drowned at birth,” he thinks. With the death of his mother, his loneliness is total, and even he realizes that “It wasn’t good for [him], the way this house was now. Even a gom like him could see that.” The pasture land on his farm has been leased to Dermot McDermott, and seeing McDermott lording it around on the Cunliffes’ property only adds to Johnsey’s “dead-quiet loneliness” as he has to cope with the “noisy ignorance” of McDermott and “his fancy farm machinery.” When the real estate market takes off, leading to the economic “bubble,” much of the town becomes interested in buying the land belonging to Johnsey, and they are not subtle in their approaches.
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