This may be my book of the year. It's the story of quiet, undemonstrative, passive Eilis, sent to America by her family to get work though she, like they, would sooner have stayed at home. She's accepting of all the difficulties of the horrific voyage, a new job not of her choosing, her boarding house presided over by an Irish immigrant, her loneliness. She seeks to better herself by gaining book keeping qualifications, and in due course she meets Tony. He's clearly a lovely lad, and she likes him a lot. But does she love him? She rather supposes not. The plot twists when a family tragedy summons Eilis back to Enniscorthy.... and here you'll have to find out for yourself how the plot moves on. This is a simply written undemonstrative book,in which we come to care very much about unspophisticated Eilis. Emotionally engaging, this book charmed its way under my skin ( )

Brooklyn - Toibin
Audio performance by Kirsten Potter
4 stars

This was a good book to follow several books that were high tension reading.It’s a very low key story. Eilis Lacey has the usual struggles of a young woman in a new land. Difficult adjustments, certainly, but nothing earth shattering. Her story was interesting to me without disturbing my peace.

The stifling, judgemental atmosphere of the mid-century Irish village caused me some frustration. I wanted Eilis to find some assertive rebellion. She was fortunate to have her sister's manipulative backing. I enjoyed looking over Eilis’ shoulder as she adjusted to life in Brooklyn. This is a book of detailed character study with a rich historic atmosphere. It wasn’t exciting, but I liked it.

I’m looking forward to checking out the upcoming sequel, Long Island, in May, 2024. ( )

Coming-of-Age

I expected much more. The main character is too passive; everything just happens to her (and most of it is good.) She is an Irish immigrant who has a good job and nice living quarters on her arrival, night classes that are paid for and she meets a really nice young man to boot. ( )

This is exactly the sort of literary fiction that makes me feel ambivalent about literary fiction. I don't mean I didn't like it, I just mean I felt tired by the time I finished it, and hesitant to repeat the experience soon.

Brooklyn is a quiet story about a young woman who emigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn in the 1950s. The storytelling is comfortable yet spare; the historical details are immersive. This is a novel you can finish in a weekend (and I did).

The theme seems to be the way our identities—perhaps women's identities specifically—are contingent on circumstance; Eilis spends much of her time masking or questioning her feelings, and her selfhood becomes illegible as a result. I liked how her relationships were mediated by letters, or by social expectations—it made me think of communication theory, the way some messages simply can't go through.

As a portrait of young womanhood, Brooklyn is certainly joyless and claustrophobic, though subtly so. To the extent that Eilis has a stable identity, it seems to be rooted in her desire to be an accountant. I want all the best for this confused young person, but at the end of the day, I prefer my heroines to be a bit more verbose and defiant.