BROOKLYN BOOK REVIEW | JANUARY 2017

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Brooklyn has a strong scale of emotions, with rich Irish humour. The novel is set in the 1950s, focusing around the life of Eilis Lacey, from Enniscorthy, Ireland. The town of Enniscorthy, is close knit; everyone knows each others business. Eilis Lacey, with the help of her older sister, Rose, emigrates to Brooklyn. Her sister works as a bookkeeper in an office, and plays golf on weekends, so she's quite respected in the town. She meets a priest, that now is situated in Brooklyn, and organises the emigration of Eilis.

 The novel focuses on the themes of homesickness, loneliness, love and death. Toibin portrays Eilis as a shy, modest young girl, developing gradually to a confident woman. The character development of Eilis, through grief and loneliness, it offers the view of the female in that time, their status was improving, as you can see in the novel, Eilis starts a class in bookkeeping and she is part of the few females there. Her brother are away in England, and her father is dead, so her mother and her sister are left behind in Ireland. 

As Eilis arrives in Toibin she is in a boarding house, which is run my Mrs Kehoe, and has other guests, Miss McAdam, Sheila Heffernan, Patty McGuire, Diana Montini and Miss Keegan. Toibin emphasises American stereotypes of confidence and good humour through Diana and Patty, who don't share the same traditional, strict morals as Mrs Kehoe or Miss McAdam. Eilis discovers a lot about American culture through them, as they are care-free girls, and help her to settle in to her new life. 

Toibin expresses the theme of love, as Eilis meets an Italian boy, at a traditional Irish Dance, who insists he's there because he 'likes Irish girls'. They soon fall in love, and Toibin shares the vast migration of cultures that are in Brooklyn, from Italians, to Jewish. Still, Eilis seems unsure about becoming too endorsed in someone that may not always be there, she doesn't want to commit to someone who is too eager about their future, in terms of children and were they are going to live, only after a few months of dating, and she's being cautious around him. 

There also some social context in the novel, such as racism. Eilis works in a high end department store; Bartocci's. Toibin touches on racism, and how it contrasts with society today, 'everyone was staring at them'. Grief is soon upon Eilis as her sister is tragically found dead at home, this brings a conflict of whether Eilis will return home, or stay in Brooklyn with her beloved Tony, and her new life. Tony offers her a 'compromise', that she marries him before she goes home, that way he knows that she will come back. In some parts of their romance, Eilis is seen as more uncertain as what is going to happen in their relationship, so she seems to distance herself emotionally from her, But when she gets the news that her sisters has died, she consoles in him and he is the only one there, emotionally comforting her. 

Eilis returns to Ireland, newly-wed, but hiding the secret from her family and friends, whilst grieving her sisters death, wishing she was there to morally guide her, as she always has. Eilis seems to not have the best relationship with her mother, and she dreads sitting in the same room, alone with her.  As people don't know she's married, her best friend Nancy, sets her up with Jim Farrell, an only child of a very wealthy family. He had previously been rude to her, and at first their is a frosty reception from Eilis, as he has a reputation of being rude and cold to girls that he seems to like. She seems to forget that she has a husband in America, and commits to seeing Jim. Toibin creates her as having a double life, conflicting her from the what is right to do and what she wants to do. There;s a large contrasts to the girl she was before she left Ireland, to when she's returned. Her life is in Brooklyn, but this is her home and everything she's always wanted is being put in front of her; a job in the town, a love interest in Jim Farrell, and she has her friends there. A continuing motif and character of Miss Kelly, symbolises the negative atmosphere that she brings. She has found out about her marriage in America to an Italian man, and suspicious in to what Eilis is doing with Jim Farrell She immediately books her place on the next liner and goes back to Brooklyn. As well as confessing to her mother of her marriage.

The novel is saturated with themes of love, death, grief, homesickness, glee and joy. Toibin expresses the novel in the moral value of that society and what was right and what was wrong. Eilis as a character is transformed as a girl who does what she thinks is right to herself, but may hurt others around her. It's positively acclaimed as 'a novel with authentic detail, moved along by the ripples of affection and doubt that shape any life'. Like-minded people, that are connecting with her character can see why she's made certain decisions.