Nora Webster

Set in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, in the middle of the 20th century, Colm Tóibín's novel centers on Nora Webster, a mother of four left a widow in her forties without enough money. Her husband Maurice, the love of her life, had rescued her from the confining world she was born into, and she fears being pulled back into it. Secretive and strong-willed in a town where everyone knows everything, she is consumed by grief and blind to the pain of her young sons. Memories of her own mother, and of the distance between them, begin to surface.

It appears on a roundup of the books Barack Obama recommended during his presidency.