George Moore (1852-1933), considered Ireland’s first great modern novelist, wrote Albert Nobbs in 1918.
The book has a perspective that breaks the taboos of the period in terms of sexuality and identity.
In this short and impressive book, we read the story of a middle-aged waiter who has been working in one of Dublin’s luxury hotels for years. Albert Nobbs, the waiter, is described on the back cover of the book as “One of those people we meet everywhere and instantly forget.”
This waiter has a surprising unknown secret. He is disguised as a man, but he is actually a woman. She has been a waitress disguised as a man for years and no one has ever realized her secret. Due to the gnawing side of her big secret, we know Nobbs as someone who communicates little with people and is too strict. Until he has to share his room with a painter who comes to the hotel where he works. It is another surprise to read that the painter has the same secret as him. However, it is a known fact that women who had difficulty finding a job at that time preferred this method.
Nobbs’ life begins to transform as a result of the painter’s idea. He will now pursue his desires by protecting the self he has built over the years and will begin to take steps to transform his life.
Albert Nobbs is a book that you will read with curiosity and pleasure and you can even finish it in a few hours. Although you will agree with Nobbs most of the time, you will feel sad at the moments when he has trouble protecting himself against the people he has gotten into trouble with or with whom he has had avoidant contacts for years.
Throughout the book you will witness his need for love, his desire to be recognized, to live as an individual and his sad story.
Albert Nobbs is an avoidant who cannot exist his body, his emotions, his self, his identity.
His struggle to be accepted and to hide from other people, which he worries about with a change big enough to change his gender, seems to draw attention to our lives in the shadow of social acceptance, where each of us cannot exist as our own selves.
As we read Nobbs’ story and get to know the person he has become, we enter into an internal reckoning on behalf of the price we pay to be accepted by society.
The language of the book flows like water. It is simple and smooth. Of course, the success of the translator of the book published by Can Yayınları has a great share in this smoothness.
Happy reading.
TITLE
Year of First Edition: 1927
Genre: Novel
Author: George Moore
