Brooklyn (Eilis Lacey Series)

It was an interesting book. To see how some Irish fared in the new world and what they made of their lives. Yet others were looked down upon by their own people. The class levels were alive and strong back then. Disappointing they couldn't/wouldn't help each other. Eilish was a disappointing character.

In "Brooklyn," Colm Tóibín introduces us to Eilis Lacey, a young woman looking to find a place for herself in her small Irish hometown a few years after the end of World War II. She has a good head for figures and would love to find work as a bookkeeper or accountant, but although she has been taking classes, employment opportunities are few and far between, and all she's been able to find so far is part-time work in a shrewish neighbor's grocery shop. Unlike her elegant, outgoing older sister Rose, Eilis doesn't have much of a social life either beyond a couple of close lifelong friends. When a visiting priest offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she dreads leaving the only home she's ever known, but she never seriously considers turning down the offer. In Brooklyn, Eilis keep homesickness at bay by focusing on her department store job during the day, her studies in the evening. Not until the evening she meets Tony, the handsome plumber son of Italian immigrants, at a church dance does she begin to allow herself to set down even the most tenuous emotional roots in the new land. Unfortunately, just as she starts to think she might be ready to accept that her future lies in America with Tony, devastating news arrives from Ireland, and Eilis finds herself caught between two countries, two obligations, two futures that could be hers. There isn't much in the way of a traditional plot here. There's no antagonist, no central conflict, almost no dramatic action. "Brooklyn" is not so much a novel as a slice of life. This is realistic fiction in its purest form, neither one whit more interesting than life itself, nor one whit less. Tóibín's prose is smooth and unobtrusive, and the reader finds himself sinking, as it were, into the flow of another life. We want to know what's going to happen for precisely the same reason that Eilis does, for the same reason we look forward to the unfolding events of our own lives. "Brooklyn" is by turns tense, ambiguous, tedious, and uncomfortably irresolute, because life is all of those things. This is *not* the kind of novel you read to escape reality, but to illuminate it delicately from within. More than anything else, perhaps, "Brooklyn" is a character study of the phlegmatic personality. From the beginning, we see the major decisions in Eilis's life being made by those around her. Her neighbor offers her a part-time job, and she doesn't want to take it, but she does. Her family and Father Flood arrange for her to go to Brooklyn, and she doesn't want to go, but she does. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to know anything about the ending, even in the most general terms.) Although she appears to gain independence and confidence from her experiences in America, it becomes obvious in the end that these changes are merely superficial: the unassuming demeanor is gone, but Eilis again and again betrays her instincts and her principles, and finds herself in the end faced with a dilemma she can't get out of without hurting some of the people she cares about, largely because she can't manage to assert herself at the crucial moment. Even the all-important choice she makes in the end isn't so much chosen as forced upon her by circumstance (including a chain of coincidences that might not seem particularly farfetched in any other novel, but here served as a rude awakening, ten pages before the end, that this was a piece of fiction and not a rich slice of history after all). "Brooklyn" is a lovely little book with a light touch that belies its true depths. Readers looking for escape, high drama, or wholly affirmative character development are likely to be disappointed, but those willing to immerse themselves in the narrative and let the flow of events carry them to the end, however unsatisfying, are likely to find themselves strangely satisfied for all that.

I first read this book a year or so ago and found it quite forgettable. More recently I saw that my own favorite writer had written glowing comments about it on his Facebook page and then I saw the movie was coming out, so I thought "Wow, I must have really missed something--let me read this again." Turns out it truly was forgettable, because as I read it the second time I only had the barest notions of what was going to happen. SPOILER ALERT: Basically, Eilis comes to America for no particular reason except that apparently her family decided to send her. She just passively accepts and goes, and she lives in a boarding house that's neither wonderful nor intolerable, she gets a job that's neither horrible nor great. Ho hum. So this goes along for a while until I was thinking there was clearly nothing for her to look forward to--ever!--besides the prospect of meeting someone to marry. So then she meets the wonderful, handsome, clean, kind, thoughtful etc. etc. etc, Tony. I thought surely Tony would prove to be less wonderful than he seemed, or maybe she'd find out he was illiterate or something, but again--zero drama, he's exactly what he seems and yet she doesn't love him or hate him, she just kinda goes along. Finally after wonderful Tony has been patiently squiring her around for a couple of years or something, Eilis must return home for a visit due to a death in the family. Tony asks her to marry him (privately, at the courthouse) before she goes, just as an insurance policy because he doubts she'll return. By then she's decided what the heck, she guesses she'll keep him, so she marries him. Like it's no big deal. Then she goes home to Ireland and IMMEDIATELY takes up with some random guy she only met once before. She thinks to herself how hurt Tony would be, but oh well, she keeps on with it. She's in no hurry to go home. Eventually she figures out somebody's going to be hurt either way but she's not exactly anguished about it. Then finally when somebody threatens to spill the beans that she is actually married, suddenly she's on the next boat home. The end. Well WTF. Are we supposed to LIKE this protagonist? Because all I could think was how totally disloyal she was. I didn't empathize with her "dilemma" of having two men in her life at all, I just disapproved of her conduct. I found a lot of loose ends in this story, too. For example--if her landlady Mrs. Kehoe who liked her so much actually had a relative in Eilis's hometown and the two of them were discussing Eilis, why would Mrs Kehoe never have said "Hey, guess what, my cousin says you used to work in her store!" And what was the whole thing with Miss Fortini acting all lesbian about the bathing suits and then nothing about that is ever mentioned again? And the letters from Tony that arrived while she was in Ireland but she never read them--I was thinking something important would be in there, but nope, we never find out, she never bothers to open them. And when she does decide to leave Ireland, she just drops old Jim a note to say "See ya," despite the fact that he said he didn't know what he'd do if he lost her again. So anyway, I'll be curious to see what kind of movie they make out of this. It was a highly unsatisfying tale in my opinion.

I know some readers struggled to connect with Eilis, the main character, and I get it—she's not exactly warm and fuzzy. But I think that's part of what makes her believable. If you're not familiar with the way some cultures (like mid-century Ireland) handle emotions—very privately, very quietly—then Eilis might seem cold or even passive. But I saw her as someone trying to navigate huge life changes without the emotional vocabulary or support many of us take for granted today. The writing is beautiful in a stripped-down, no-fluff kind of way. It’s not a plot-heavy book, but the tension sneaks up on you. The internal conflicts, the pull between two very different lives, and the weight of silence and secrets—especially toward the end—were what stuck with me. I do wish the ending had been a little more fleshed out. It felt like Tóibín led us right to the edge of something big, then stepped back. But it did exactly what an ending should: it left me thinking, and it pushed me to pick up the sequel, Long Island, to find out what Eilis does with the life she’s chosen (or drifted into?). Overall, Brooklyn is subtle, a little slow at times, but very human. Not every story has to shout to be powerful.

All'inizio del romanzo, Eilis conduce una vita relativamente protetta. Tuttavia, la lunga storia dell'immigrazione irlandese negli Stati Uniti è rimasta intatta, motivo per cui Eilis trova una comunità irlandese così coesa quando arriva a Brooklyn.

Delivered on time with good packaging. Good book to read.

Main character seems to have no particular emotions and the backbone of a jellyfish, which left me wondering: what was the point of this novel? At least it didn't take much time to read.

Such a lovely story, I really found it hard to put down. The author has such a lovely way of writing when one thing flows seamlessly into the next. I did watch the film before reading some time ago and things were slightly different so knew the outcome, but an excellent read.

愛って素晴らしい