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.