He gets it so right... but could do so much more 
 Writing of his earlier novel, Brooklyn, novelist Zoe Heller said "Tobin writes about women more convincingly, I think, than any other living novelist." She may well be right. Certainly the title character of Tobin's new novel, the 40-year-old widow of a small-town Irish schoolmaster who has died before his time, is as convincing as any other woman you are likely to meet in fiction. And he gets the period so right too, the late 1960s. And, of course, the country. Tobin once more returns to his own birthplace, the town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, a dozen miles inland from the south coast of Ireland. It is the town that a young girl called Eilis Lacey leaves to go to America in the earlier book; there is a brief overlap with Brooklyn near the beginning of this, though it is by no means a direct sequel. The easy way in which Tobin slips back into the world of his childhood, fully inhabiting its places, small events, and people, without any attempt to package it for outside audiences, seems effortless, but it is a small marvel. Growing up in Ireland myself as I did (albeit in another part of the country, and fifteen years earlier), I salute his authenticity; half the characters in the novel might have been my mother's friends, filling the house with their gossip and laughter. 
 Not that there is much laughter here at first. Nora is stricken by her husband's death, both emotionally and financially. Her widow's pension is inadequate, and she must go back to work, submitting herself to the office tyranny of a former colleague whom she had mistreated years before. Her husband's long illness has caused her to neglect many of her friends and even her family, so that although she has respect in the town has the schoolteacher's widow, she needs to build her personal connections over again. And she is a proud woman, sharp-tongued when crossed. But capable: capable of effective work, capable of making decisions, capable of eventually embracing new interests, and above all capable of love. Here is a woman who for 22 years had defined herself only as someone's wife, now slowly rediscovering herself as her own person. 
 This latest novel also continues Tobin's interest in the theme of mothers, especially mothers with sensitive or unusual sons. He dealt with it explicitly in his story collection Mothers and Sons, but it crops up in nearly all his books, not least his alternative gospel, The Testament of Mary. Nora Webster is the mother of two daughters -- Fiona in college, and Aine about to go there--and two sons still at home. Donal, the elder, is a shy boy with a stammer who takes refuge in photography. Conor, his younger brother, does not really come into his own until the end of the novel. In many ways, Donal's story keeps edging into the limelight as though this were the true emotional focus for the author, but it keeps slipping out again into the shadows. At the very end of the book, there is a scene that suggests that there will be more to be told about Conor, though we never learn what that is. And there are tantalizing but unfulfilled hints about Aine too. Is Tobin perhaps setting himself up for a sequel? 
 But this also touches on what bothered me about the book: its ultimate lack of continuity, direction, or focus. Halfway through, I wrote to some friends who had read it before me, saying I was sure I would end with five stars; small in scale though it was, its observation was pretty well perfect. But then in the second half, it began to drift into a series of disconnected episodes: Nora tackling the local headmaster, Nora going on a trip to Spain, Nora taking singing lessons, Nora painting the house. Each could have been an installment of a radio or television series--though a very good series, to be sure. I remember being similarly frustrated by the episodic nature of Tobin's novel The Master, about Henry James. I remember feeling that for all the distinguished writing in Brooklyn (as here too), it was really little different in kind from the sort of thing we might expect from, say, a Maeve Binchy. I begin to feel that Tobin, who can be superb as a story writer, may lack the architecture and momentum required for the novel form. I even felt cheated in the long arc of Nora's self-recovery. Too much of what she achieves is made possible by minor dei-ex-machina: financial support from better-off relatives, acts of friendship from neighbors in the town. Sure, this says a lot about her own character, in building up such a reservoir of good will. But not so much as seeing her in action. Let her take on an abusive employer or self-satisfied cleric, and I jump on the benches and cheer. Let her buy a stereo and discover chamber music, and I hear it again with her. She has indeed emerged from her chrysalis. So why do I then feel that this butterfly has nowhere much to go?