In a small town in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis Lacey is among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. So when she is offered a job in America, she leaves her family to start a new life in Brooklyn, New York.
Where to start with this one. I’d say it’s a 2.5, which I rounded down because I would have DNF’ed this if it wasn’t for a book club.
I have two WTF moments from this book.
1) Miss Fortini molesting Eilis. Why?? It happens and then we move on like she isn’t suddenly a predator. 2) The sex scene between Eilis and Tony. WOW. Rapey, though I think I could maybe buy that he’s unaware of her discomfort?? I don’t know. But the closing paragraph for that scene is what really got me like, what in the actual f… I saw red.
This was kind of a quiet, boring book. But it's also weird in that you don't mind too much that nothing too exciting happens. You care about the characters in a bland half-assed way but you keep reading to find out what happens next. Might be a good book to read when you're on vacation or something because it doesn't take too much concentration to keep up with the simple story line. And if you leave the book at the beach or forget you left it in the hotel room while you are driving home, you won't be too disappointed if you never find out how the story resolves.
That said, it's kind of a good story in it's half-assed, bland way.
What a strange reading experience this was. I cannot honestly say that I enjoyed Brooklyn and yet neither can I say that I disliked it because I can't stop thinking about the book. Eilis is a good girl and a smart one who could have emigrated to America to take charge of her new life, yet ties to family and keeping the Irish ways have left her a bobbing cork adrift in her own life. While it's sold as a morality tale it seems that every major decision in her life was always made by other people. Eilis merely bows to the inevitable. I wanted to slap her and shake her and tell her to wake up and speak up for herself. She drove me nuts and yet she's a very sympathetic character.
A friend of mine reads recaps of television shows she likes before she sees them. That makes no sense to me. Half the fun of most shows is being surprised by how the story plays out. Will this be the episode in which the seven castaways get off the island? Will Jan make peace with herself and realize that even though she’s not Marcia, she’s nonetheless a worthy human being this week? Will Rhoda find true love?
It can be hard to avoid spoilers when a book has been made into a successful movie. Hard, but possible. I don’t watch TV and the trailer for Brooklyn wasn’t the kind of trailer movie theaters show before The Revenant. I take spoiler avoidance to extremes and avoid reading even the dust jacket of books I’ve selected. Over the years, I’ve gotten disciplined enough to not have to remove them or struggle …
A friend of mine reads recaps of television shows she likes before she sees them. That makes no sense to me. Half the fun of most shows is being surprised by how the story plays out. Will this be the episode in which the seven castaways get off the island? Will Jan make peace with herself and realize that even though she’s not Marcia, she’s nonetheless a worthy human being this week? Will Rhoda find true love?
It can be hard to avoid spoilers when a book has been made into a successful movie. Hard, but possible. I don’t watch TV and the trailer for Brooklyn wasn’t the kind of trailer movie theaters show before The Revenant. I take spoiler avoidance to extremes and avoid reading even the dust jacket of books I’ve selected. Over the years, I’ve gotten disciplined enough to not have to remove them or struggle to keep them out of my vision. In the case of Colm Tóibín’s novel, however, I wish I had.
I couldn’t figure out when it was taking place. There may have been clues that escaped me because of my lack of historical knowledge, but wherever they are I don’t think they’re in the first thirty pages. On the back of my 2012 paperback edition it says it takes place “in the hard years following World War Two,” but I only read that after I finished the book. I’d read nearly half the novel thinking it took place after the first world war, not the second, because the language, manner and customs of the main characters were much closer to Downton Abbey than to Happy Days. It’s not until the 125th page of this 262-page novel that a minor character makes it clear that it’s post WWII, and nearly 20 pages later when you can tag it to a specific year: 1952. (You know this because some of the characters see the movie Singin’ In the Rain.)
Not that this detracts from the book, it’s just a personal qualm. Tóibín’s prose is gentle and precise, yet reading Brooklyn is invigorating. It’s as if Tóibín has chronicled the life of a favorite aunt who emigrated from Ireland during that time period and he’s worked hard to bring her to life. He does. By the end of the book, you know Eilis well and feel genuine suspense as she has to make the most important decision of her life.
A fringe benefit to Brooklyn is that it deals with immigration and how newcomers assimilate into new countries. Granted, it doesn’t cover the issues as they stand now—Eilis does not practice a religion that has an extremist faction that practices terrorism against the West, and she requires no social services. Brooklyn does, however, show a real person with real dreams and hopes as she makes her way in the strange new world she begins to regard as home.
Brooklyn is captivating and beautifully told. It's a brief and spare account of a young Irish immigrant, Eilis Lacey, making her way alone in Brooklyn after WWII.
I'm becoming a fan of this author. In my frequent complaints about the seemingly requisite shock value featured in too many modern novels, Tóibín's fiction is an example of how to do it right. Few of us are molded by experiences of extreme upheavals, instead becoming fascinating and varied individuals in response to tame and relatively unvaried experiences. We construct our natures over the course of decades, choosing when to be passive, when to struggle, to some extent when to suffer and when to savor and celebrate. You might want to shake Eilis on occasion, when she's more acted upon than acting, but that's likely to be true of those surrounding you, as well.
Tóibín seems to be almost uniquely aware that this …
Brooklyn is captivating and beautifully told. It's a brief and spare account of a young Irish immigrant, Eilis Lacey, making her way alone in Brooklyn after WWII.
I'm becoming a fan of this author. In my frequent complaints about the seemingly requisite shock value featured in too many modern novels, Tóibín's fiction is an example of how to do it right. Few of us are molded by experiences of extreme upheavals, instead becoming fascinating and varied individuals in response to tame and relatively unvaried experiences. We construct our natures over the course of decades, choosing when to be passive, when to struggle, to some extent when to suffer and when to savor and celebrate. You might want to shake Eilis on occasion, when she's more acted upon than acting, but that's likely to be true of those surrounding you, as well.
Tóibín seems to be almost uniquely aware that this evolution of the individual can be subtly and simply and poignantly portrayed. Five stars.
All female tonight. Opinions ranged from 'Loved it' to 'Didn't think much of it at first, but it grew on me' to 'Really?'. But even the detractors found the writing lovely and the sense of place palpable. And even though I found the portrayal of Eilis spineless and naive, she was consistently spineless and naive, as a young Irish woman would have been in the 50's.
