Brooklyn: A Novel Review
I just loved this book. So did my husband and my best friend. It is a deceptively simple story about a quiet, frightened young woman who comes to America as an immigrant in the 1950's. If you look at it as a coming of age book, or a sensitive portrait of the immigrant experience, you will only be seeing part of what is here. I believe that it is a brutally honest character study of a certain type of woman that we may like to think we have evolved beyond. The end is intriguing and somewhat shocking; it makes you reflect back on everything that has come before. I can't say anymore about that. So let me end by saying that I found it honest, moving and evocative. Will you like it as much? Let me say that we discussed it in my book group and there were very, very different reactions. The resultant conversation was terrific, as we tried to figure out why it 'worked' for some of us and not others.
Brooklyn: A Novel Feature
- ISBN13: 9781439148952
- Condition: New
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Brooklyn: A Novel Overview
“One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.
Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.
Brooklyn: A Novel Specifications
Amazon Best of the Month, May 2009: Committed to a quiet life in little Enniscorthy, Ireland, the industrious young Eilis Lacey reluctantly finds herself swept up in an unplanned adventure to America, engineered by the family priest and her glamorous, "ready for life" sister, Rose. Eilis's determination to embrace the spirit of the journey despite her trepidation--especially on behalf of Rose, who has sacrificed her own chance of leaving--makes a bittersweet center for Brooklyn. Colm Tóibín's spare portrayal of this contemplative girl is achingly lovely, and every sentence rings with truth. Readers will find themselves swept across the Atlantic with Eilis to a boarding house in Brooklyn where she painstakingly adapts to a new life, reinventing herself and her surroundings in the letters she writes home. Just as she begins to settle in with the help of a new love, tragedy calls her home to Enniscorthy, and her separate lives suddenly and painfully merge into one. Tóibín's haunted heroine glows on the page, unforgettably and lovingly rendered, and her story reflects the lives of so many others exiled from home. --Daphne Durham
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Customer Reviews
half a story - reader be warned! - Kathryn M. Tracey -
i was so excited to find a new irish author, after a search through the kindle contemporary fiction section. though aggravating at times, i did get engrossed in this story. because i was reading it on my kindle vs a physical book, i didn't realize i had come to the end of the book. i kept hitting "next page", thinking my kindle had malfunctioned, but no, the story abruptly ended with absolutely no closure. i absolutely hated the ending to the point of yelling internally, "that's it?" i am completely disappointed. so much for my belief that i found a great new irish author. i will not read another of toibin's books. forgive me for not capitalizing the beginning of sentences.....couldn't figure out how to do it on the kindle.
Disappointing - LTS220 - Illinois
I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the book - Eilis's journey from Ireland to New York and all that she learned as well as the description of New York at the time. However, then came the second half. Did I start reading a different book because the character from the first half did a complete 180 and lost her backbone and morals??? I'm not sure why the disconnect between the two but it made me lower my rating from 5 stars to 3 stars.
Dreadful - Eleanor Arlene - Long Island, New York
This book is awful. The characters are vapid, the writing is dull, it is a waste of time. I was so disappointed.
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