Reviewed by Wendy McLauchlan, Publisher Relations Clerk
Although Colm Tobin’s Brooklyn was a very difficult book for me to get into in the beginning, I was soon drawn into the story of Eilis, a young Irish woman faced with the challenges of finding her place in life. I can whole heartedly relate to the character as I too struggled early on in my quest to find happiness within myself, both emotionally and physically.
The story of Eilis begins in Ireland where she has a dream of studying the skill of bookkeeping, all the while living in the shadows of her beautiful socialite sister and popular friends. Realizing Eilis’s sadness, her sister arranges for Eilis to move to America, in hopes that she will study at a college in Brooklyn, N.Y.
After arriving in America, Eilis soon realizes that her problems are much the same in America as they were in Ireland, only in America she is alone with nobody to talk to about her fears. Not wanting to worry her family back home, Eilis keeps her feelings to herself.
Eilis eventually meets, and ultimately falls in love with Tony, a young Italian man. Still uncertain as to what love should be she succumbs to the realization that this might be it for her, the only love she is destined to have. Studying to become a bookkeeper soon consumes all of her time until a tragedy in Ireland changes her life and she is forced to travel back to her homeland. While in Ireland, Eilis falls for another young man and is faced with the decision of her life: whether to stay in Ireland, or return to America and to Tony.
Brooklyn is an excellent novel of self discovery and of the struggle one young woman faces when trying to survive on her own in a world full of uncertainty.
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