Customer Reviews

Brooklyn

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(69)
3 star:		(31)
2 star:		(33)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Reading Brooklyn was an unusual experience. Why? Because I had to read the whole book to appreciate it and be gripped by it. The book was like an embryo--rudimentary, unborn. But when I read the last paragraph, I actually got a spine chill. And, later, after shelving it, my thoughts wandered back to the story with a deeper pleasure.

For the first 100 (or more) pages, nothing much happens. Young provincial Irish girl Eilis Lacey travels to America(circa 1950), leaving her sister and mother in the Irish berg. She improves her education, her appearance, and refines her tastes. With the help of a family friend (a priest), Eilis finds a place to live in a rooming house and a tedious job in a clothing shop. She encounters new friends, (all rather shallow), meets a man, has a courtship. It is all very mundane. When she lies in bed after receiving a letter from home, she actually thinks about her mother or sister taking out the envelope, what kind of envelope, how many envelopes. I was exasperated at that point.

Yet I kept reading. Toibin is a competent writer, and I was at least partially engaged, although I remained skeptical of any interesting story emerging. You know how some authors fail to maintain control over their story and characters? Well, Toibin has perhaps too MUCH control. That is how it seemed as I was reading. It plodded along, but rather lightly. I did like Eilis and cared what happened to her, but I wanted something imaginative or inventive to occur. At least one splashy thing. But when something dramatic happened in the last 100 pages, it didn't really affect me too much. It seemed more of a vehicle for other action to take place, for Eilis to enter into decisive conflict and change.

It is so subtle and restrained that I almost didn't know when I became fully engaged. During the last portion of the book, I was in suspense, wondering what would happen, but speculating that it would be predictable.

Full resolution occurs in the final moments. That last paragraph was a titanic moment for me. It undid all my former expectations with its bittersweet irony and unpredictable ending. My three-star rating went up to four-stars. I finished this quick novel in two sittings, but the impact really begins at the end and continues to foment even after you are finished.

Don't give up on it even though it seems that nothing is happening. The whole is better than the sum of its parts--the end was arresting, even astonishing.

Brief summary, no spoilers:

There are no explosions in this book. There are no murders, car chases, scenes with international espionage, or anything that would require its movie rendition to have special effects.

Instead, this beautifully written story is about a young girl named Eilis Lacey, who lives with her mother and with her attractive, vivacious sister Rose in a small town in Ireland. The time period is the 1950s. Eilis is smart and good with numbers but there is not much employment opportunity where she lives, so a priest with connections in both Ireland and New York gets her both boarding and a job in Brooklyn.

Needless to say, Eilis has to learn to live in a new culture and away from the only home she's ever known. Everything is so strange and new, but soon she meets a sweet young man named Tony and suddenly she begins to adjust and flourish.

This is the story of a young, immigrant girl learning to deal with change and adversity and how this makes her grow both intellectually and emotionally. It's also about dealing with disparate cultures, and having your heart and soul divided. Just what is "home?"

That this novel is written by a man is truly stunning - because Eilis comes alive from these pages and her thoughts and reactions generally rang true.

I also want to add that I could not stop reading towards the end because I just had to find out how this was all going to be resolved. And let's just say that this would make a very good novel for book clubs - there are going to be lots of different opinions on the denouement.

My only quibbles? I had trouble with the male characters, especially Tony. In many ways he didn't seem real to me, and if anything, too idealized. In many ways I wish this novel had been longer, and the relationships and personalities had been fleshed out more.

This is difficult to say without a spoiler, so I'll be careful not to - but as stunning as the ending is, I'm not sure it felt right to me. But then again, I'm not Eilis, I didn't grow up with her experiences, and maybe that's the whole point. (Hence, part of why this would be a good book for any book clubs.)

But I do highly recommend this book. Colm Toibin is one of my favorite writers, and he just writes beautifully.

Colm Toibin enters William Trevor territory with this lovely novel about an Irish immigrant's move to Brooklyn in post-World War II America. In spare unhurried prose he covers her experience with the departure from her limited world, a nightmarish crossing, learning to deal with a new job, night school, her boarding house acquaintances and new love.

Those looking for a speedy read will be frustrated by the measured pace of the incidents as well as their unremarkable nature. But in dwelling on the quotidian Toibin evokes an all enveloping reality of time and place and character.

Relationships aren't distorted for melodramatic ends as in "The Blackwater Lightship", nor is the book as moving or as intellectually and emotionally satisfying as his masterpiece "The Master". But this is as good an example of a writer's craft in creating a lived-in reality of small engrossing lives as one can find.

Spare, beautiful writing gives this novel three stars. But the story itself is so lacking in depth, with unrealized characters. Eilis, the protaganist, offers so much potential for the author to plumb the history of the immigrant -- their myriad reasons for coming here, the struggles to make it, the ties to their home country.

Instead, life basically happens to this girl, with no real effort or participation of her own. She doesn't desire to come to America but it's conveniently planned out for her (including a job and home for when she arrives), she doesn't fall in love but rather comes to accept the love of another. I kept waiting for her to grow into and express her own intentions, to make her own decisions, but alas, even the ending is simply an acceptance of circumstances.

There were several tangential characters (sister Rose, the department store manager, the professor) who pique interest. I would have enjoyed learning more about them, and their stories could have elevated this passive, unfulfilling journey.

This book hooked me right away; however, the more I read, the less I liked it. Eilis, the main character, seems to sleepwalk through life, unaware of or unconcerned by the ramifications of both her actions and her inactions! By the end of the book, her thoughtlessness and lack of honor had negated any empathy I might have had for her.

The author, Colm Tóibín, never achieves what one editorial review claims -- ... "a renewed understanding that to emigrate is to become a foreigner in two places at once." Nor does he evoke what the Washington Post review "the deep homesickness..." of Irish immigrants. Frankly, the main character, Eilis, never seems to care that much about home or Brooklyn. She seems to simply let things happen rather than accept responsibility and take action. Her lack of concern for everyone in her life -- family, friends, boy friends, employers, landlord, priest -- is appalling.

A great disappointment...

This was a pleasant enough story, the kind your immigrant mother or grandmother might tell in her waning years, with the caveat that all turned out well in the end. Only, like the stories Grandma tells, it lacked the depth and tension to hold my interest for the length of a novel.

Having not read any of Colm Toibin's other works, which appear to have been prize-worthy, I can't comment on whether the shortfall here had to do with attempting to write from a female POV. Certainly other writers have managed that quite well, but here Toibin seems only to skim the surface. Events happen, but feelings about them are not explored in depth. At times the novel is peopled with various characters, none of whom, besides main character Eilis, we ever get to know, and I didn't feel I even knew her character all that well.

To me this novel was filled with missed opportunities. For example, though touched on slightly, the author seemed to have no knowledge of the deep rivalry between Italian and Irish immigrants. That Tony's mother accepted Eilis so easily--or at least it seems that way for, again, this isn't covered in depth--seems unlikely. Also, did Tony or any of his brothers fight in WWII? Some of them must have, but that never comes up. Except for the last few pages, the novel totally lacks tension, and instead goes on, page after page, with nothing more than everyday things, like going to work, going to school, going home.

Certainly this was pleasant enough, and I can't say I disliked it, but I didn't really like it either, and I'd have difficulty recommending it.

If there were a class entitled "How to Bring Characters to Life," this would have to be the textbook. By book's end, the reader has been made privy to the transformation of its main character, Eilis Lacey, from the shy, innocent Irish immigrant to a young woman whose inner strength, we are sure, will lead her through the complexities of living a life torn between two worlds.

But the wonder of this man's writing is how, in so few words, we also come to know, so well, the other inhabitants of this book -- not just those who play the most important roles in Eilis's life, but those who exist in the periphery of her world -- the shop girls, boarders, priests, teachers -- from characters with whom she comes in close contact to those she merely brushes against. Case in point: Tony's little brother, Frankie, whose feistiness and frustrations in being the youngest of four Italian brothers will grab every reader's heart.

I can only hope this becomes Volume I of "the rest of the story."

Colm Toibin's Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis, a young woman who escapes a provincial 1950s Irish upbringing and matures in a Brooklyn rooming house. Having grown up during the 50s a half mile from Ebbet's Field, shopping in the Fulton Street area, and attending Brooklyn College, I enjoyed the nostalgic walk around the block. Oddly, the novel felt 100-200 years older than the 50s, almost a manners tale, not Austen or Dickens in quality of character or plot, but somehow reaching for a little of each. Sensible expectations. The novel ambles along as if World War II never happened, with an ocean crossing depiction reminiscent of turn of the previous century nightmares followed by surprisingly little observation of the post-war Brooklyn environment. It is tempting to say that the novel would have made a better short story, or a better longer novel, but my disappointment is probably not related to the length, but to the lack of theme and focus in the narrative. There are no subplots, and fundamentally Eilis' story seems more suitable to 1st person narration. Was the story about breaking away from confining family or place, immigration, evolving realizations, obeying/breaking the rules, betrayal, achieving aspirations, first love, sexual awakening, cultural/religious differences? All of the above, and unfortunately, none of the above.

Like one of the previous reviews, I kept waiting for something dramatic...anything dramatic...to happen. The main character did what she wanted to do, or occasionally what she didn't want to do...BUT it ALWAYS turned out okay...not exactly like real life. the whole storyline is completely unrealistic...She needs a job and a room in America...the priest arranges it for her. She goes to her FIRST Friday night dance...she meets the boy she will eventually marry. She starts night school classes (paid for by the store she was working in???)...immediately rises to head of the class and passes with the highest of grades. A death occurs in in Ireland...the store gives her more than a month off to return home. She is reacquainted with a man from home and he falls desperately in love with her. I mean...come on...this book does not give a very realistic picture of what an immigrant's life was like. and the scene of Miss Fortini watching her change bathing suits? The author introduces it and then completely drops it. Why? probably because he thought it would give the book some spice, like the "first time" scene between her and Tony. Dull book.

Themes and settings strike a chord of nostalgia, and this is a pleasant enough book for a train journey or day at the beach. It is a very slow moving book, especially in the beginning, which seems rather a cliché - and even the later action is rather tedious. I felt I 'knew' every character, and I'm sure many readers will be reminded of others, but there did not seem to be anything of particular distinction or depth.

Based on other new books I have reviewed recently, this may be a trend in editing rather than an author's weakness, but the language lacks maturity and beauty. It reminds me of the vocabulary and structure from books which used to be aimed at children of twelve.

Overall, it is a worthwhile book for relaxation and warmth, but I did not find any elements to be of special note.