Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
quiet, old-fashioned and brilliant, 5 May 2009
Evocative, sparse, yet deeply emotional, the books of Colm Toibin have become some of my favourites. He writes beautifully about landscape, about the weight of the past on the present, but most importantly about people and their feelings. He is particularly good at showing family relationships and how they work.
This new book was no disappointment. in the 1950s, Eilis Lacey moves from small-town Ireland to America to work in a department store. In Brooklyn, everything is different: you can even keep the heating on at night, she writes home, with excitement. Her culture shock on arrival is so beautifully written, you feel every moment of her disorientation and terrible homesickness.
But then just as she seems finally to be settling in America, she suddenly must return home, and the gap between her two lives is revealed. Anyone who has ever had an intense experience abroad, then returned home thinking 'it seems like a dream now' must identify with Eilis. It's so delicately done, but with enormous power.
I would love to know what others thought of the ending, as that was my only reservation, but I will not discuss it here as I hate plot spoilers. Please do read this book, it's quiet, old-fashioned and brilliant.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
'it was merely a shadow at the edge of every moment of the day and night', 8 Aug 2009
`Eilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work. She watched Rose crossing the street from sunlight into shade, carrying the new leather handbag that she had bought in Clery's in Dublin in the sale'.
Each of the four sections of Colm Tóibín's latest novel, Brooklyn, starts with setting Eilis (pronounced Aylish) in her environment - either in Enniscorthy (Toibin's own home town) or in Brooklyn. Set in the 1950s there is little work available in post war Ireland. Eilis's three brothers have already left for Birmingham and there is little prospect of Eilis following in her sister's footsteps and finding a career in her home town. Rose, her mother and Father Flood from Brooklyn start to plot a new life in Brooklyn for Eilis.
The novel is written from Eilis's point of view. She is very passive - things happen to her and she doesn't always grasp their significance till later. For example, just before she leaves for Brooklyn it strikes her that her leaving will impact her sister's life - `Eilis's going, which Rose had organised so precisely, would mean that Rose would not be able to marry'. The important things are not discussed in this family - even when emigrating, though they care for each other. I thought this was very real to the time and place.
It is in the small details of Eilis' life that Tóibín is successful in this novel - the preparation for black women to buy stockings in Bertocci's, the dance in Ireland, the dances in Brooklyn with new boyfriend Tony, the baseball game Tony takes her to and Eilis' wrenching homesickness when she gets letters from home.
I've been a fan of Colm Tóibín's since The South, The Heather Blazing (Bloomsbury Classic) and The Blackwater Lightship. I liked this novel too, finding it an interesting exploration of the possibility of two different lives in different countries. Tóibín is excellent on how our environment shapes our experience and how when we return to one place the one we've left can seem distant and unreal `...everything about him seemed remote. And not only that but everything else that had happened in Brooklyn seemed as though it had almost dissolved and was no longer richly present for her'.
The glamour of having been in America in 1950s Ireland is also well drawn. On Eilis' return everything which had seemed difficult two years before now seems straightforward.
I don't think this is his best but it's an atmospheric and memorable novel - ****1/2
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23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Understated. Overrated(?), 13 May 2009
This book came to me highly recommended by a couple of people, so I was looking forward to reading it to see what all the fuss was about and I had not read anything by Colm Toibin before either so I was doubly curious.
I was not exactly disappointed by the book, indeed I enjoyed reading it very much, but I would say I was underwhelmed by it.
It is quite a simple and straight forward story about the experiences of a young woman who emigrates from Ireland in the 1950's to Brooklyn in New York. It is an experience shared by thousands, if not millions of Irish people over the years so there is a lot to relate to here for many people, including myself, especially for those from the generation of the main character Eilis. The story likewise is quite simply told, it is not showily overwritten but is instead rather understated and for me this was the major plus point of the book. I would imagine it captures very well and nostalgically the atmosphere of that time for people of a certain age, women especially. Toibin is quite skilled at drawing female characters, especially the girls that Eilis shares a boarding house with in Brooklyn, and when Eilis returns to Ireland after being in Brooklyn for a couple of years he captures very well the conflicting feelings inside of her at being home after being away, something many an emmigrant can sympathise with.
That said I do have to say this wasn't quite the 'outstanding' novel I was expecting. Very competent and controlled, yes, but it didn't blow me away like I was lead to believe. I actually found the character of Eilis quite irritating after a while. She seems to go through the whole novel in a very passive way, it's all 'Eilis thought this, but then thought this but then decided to see what happens' and she seems almost swept along by feelings she does not really give much thought to. of course this is most probably Toibin's deliberate characterisation but its hard to care for and respect a character that seems to have no mind of their own. I found myself waiting for something devastating and dramatic to happen that just didn't arrive, even though towards the end it felt like the narrative was winding up to this.
By the time I had finished reading this novel, I almost shrugged my shoulders as if to say 'Is that it?' It seems to me a lot of fuss over nothing that spectacular. An enjoyable, almost light read, but nothing spectacular. Many more people, I think, could write something as good if not a whole lot better based on their actual experiences of emmigration if only they kept it simple like Toibin. And the fact that this book is already being touted as a future Booker nominee can only lead me to speculate it is because it is written by a certain Colm Toibin, who is a well established figure in the literary world, and not on the actual merits of the novel itself.
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