Within a few weeks, Rose, having survived a rough Atlantic crossing, is ensconced in a boarding house for Irish girls in Brooklyn and selling nylons in an upmarket department store. Rose spots a solution when a priest vists from America and agrees to help find a job in Brooklyn for Ellis. The most she can get is a lowly job as a shop keepers assistant in the grocery. Though she is intelligent and reasonably good looking there few prospects of a husband or a job in accountancy or book keeping that would enable her to fulfill her potential. Eilis is clearly more an observer of life than a participant. We first encounter Eilis looking out from her bedroom window in the village of Enniscorthy watching her glamorous older sister Rose make her way down the street to an evening at the golf club.

The recently widowed Norah Webster and the young woman Eilis Lacey, heroine of Brooklyn are two brave and spirited Irish women whose predicaments are portrayed with warmth, sympathy and depth. Some went as far as saying Brookyn was “even better”. I’ve now read it and while I enjoyed it, I wouldn’t rate it as highly.īoth Norah Webster and Brooklyn give center stage to a strong female character who have to confront life changing situations and find their own way through them. More than a few people people responded by recommending his earlier novel Brooklyn.

Get swept up in this stirring adventure of an immigrant torn between longing for the family and life she left behind in Ireland and the promise of opportunity and love in her new country.Last year I made a comment in one blog post about how much I enjoyed Colm Toibin’s Norah Webster. Brooklyn was on the Booker Prize Longlist and Newsweek's 50 Books for Our Times in 2009. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, terrible news from the home country threatens the fulfillment of her dreams. She makes the difficult decision to leave her mother and sister behind to pursue a new life overseas.Įilis finds work in a Brooklyn department store, and meets Tony, an Italian from a big family. Then an offer arrives from an Irish priest in Brooklyn to sponsor her if she comes to America.

In the poor Irish economy, Ellis is unable to find work at her bookkeeping trade.

A beautiful coming of age story, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín, is set in Ireland and Brooklyn in the early 1950s, when a young woman decides to cross the Atlantic in search of a better life.Įilis Lacey has grown up in a small town in Ireland after World War Two.

Brooklyn toibin