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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Common OCD symptoms and how they manifest
Checking: the obsession or thoughts focus on some harm coming from things not being as they should, which usually centre around the theme of safety. For example, the obsession is “the building will burn down”, therefore the compulsion is checking that the oven is switched off.
Contamination: the obsession is focused on the presence of germs, dirt or harmful bacteria and how this will impact the person and/or their loved ones. For example, the obsession is “the floor is dirty; me and my family will get sick and die”, the compulsion is repetitive cleaning.
Orderliness: the obsession is a fear of sitting with uncomfortable feelings, or to prevent harm coming to oneself or others. Objectively there appears to be no logical link between the obsession and compulsion. For example,” I won’t feel right if the jars aren’t lined up” or “harm will come to my family if I don’t line up all the jars”, so the compulsion is therefore lining up the jars.
Intrusive thoughts: the intrusive thought is usually highly distressing and repetitive. Common examples may include thoughts of perpetrating violence towards others, harming others, or questions over one’s character or deeds, usually in conflict with the person’s true values. An example would be: “I think I might hurt my family”, which in turn leads to the compulsion of avoiding social gatherings.
Hoarding: the intrusive thought is the overvaluing of objects or possessions, while the compulsion is stashing or hoarding these items and refusing to let them go. For example, “this newspaper may come in useful one day”, therefore, the compulsion is hoarding newspapers instead of discarding them the next day.
Source: Dr Robert Chandler, clinical psychologist at Lighthouse Arabia
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What you as a drone operator need to know
A permit and licence is required to fly a drone legally in Dubai.
Sanad Academy is the United Arab Emirate’s first RPA (Remotely Piloted Aircraft) training and certification specialists endorsed by the Dubai Civil Aviation authority.
It is responsible to train, test and certify drone operators and drones in UAE with DCAA Endorsement.
“We are teaching people how to fly in accordance with the laws of the UAE,” said Ahmad Al Hamadi, a trainer at Sanad.
“We can show how the aircraft work and how they are operated. They are relatively easy to use, but they need responsible pilots.
“Pilots have to be mature. They are given a map of where they can and can’t fly in the UAE and we make these points clear in the lectures we give.
“You cannot fly a drone without registration under any circumstances.”
Larger drones are harder to fly, and have a different response to location control. There are no brakes in the air, so the larger drones have more power.
The Sanad Academy has a designated area to fly off the Al Ain Road near Skydive Dubai to show pilots how to fly responsibly.
“As UAS technology becomes mainstream, it is important to build wider awareness on how to integrate it into commerce and our personal lives,” said Major General Abdulla Khalifa Al Marri, Commander-in-Chief, Dubai Police.
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“Dubai’s airspace will undoubtedly experience increased traffic as UAS innovations become commonplace, the Forum allows commercial users to learn of best practice applications to implement UAS safely and legally, while benefitting a whole range of industries.”
