Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn is a novel of grace and beauty, a quiet and compelling story about what is inside of us, about what and who we carry with us as we become adults, as we change through challenges met into singular human beings separate from our family and yet always connected to them through our shared past. The story of Eilis, a young woman who leaves Ireland to find work in America, is told through language that is crystalline and sharp, simple and yet compelling in its perfect evocation of Eilis’ thoughts, feelings, and observations about herself, her family, and the events that propel her through to adulthood.
Brooklyn unfolds as real life unfolds, in movement that is sometimes sudden, sometimes slow, but always unstoppable; Eilis is carried forward, away from everything she knows and into a new world that is strange and lonely and that leaves her struggling to balance herself, to understand how she fits into the community of people around her. As time passes, she begins to find her place in Brooklyn but when a tragic event brings her back to Ireland, the pull of her old life and of the familiar ways of defining herself and fitting in throws her off keel again, and again she must find her own way clear to who she is and what she wants.
Set in a small town in Ireland and the bustling metropolis of Brooklyn in the early 1950s, this novel is perfect in its conjuration of both: the gossiping small-mindedness of the small town and the web of connections that bind the townspeople together, including the countryside around them, the shared history of generations, places of family lore, and the cemetery; and the dynamics of crowded Brooklyn, the pulsing of life in its streets and the clashing of cultures but there are binding ties here also, including the shared dreams of self-improvement and faith in life’s open possibilities, and the joys of Coney Island and baseball at Dodgers stadium.
The characters in the book are very real people, decent and flawed, hopeful and fearful, each with their own struggle, their own dreams of self-realization and happiness. No character in the novel is really bad (except for Nettles Kelly and her mother was “evil incarnate” and so there wasn’t much hope for her) and all of them have hidden secrets – struggles — that when revealed to Eilis, change her views of them and of herself.
Everyone struggles in life, to both connect and to self-define; it is only through the process of the struggles that we find connection and identity. It is Toibin’s underlying faith in the transformative nature of everyday struggles that gives Brooklyn its powerful and life-affirming vitality. Brooklyn is a slice of life novel, quiet but spellbinding (you will not want to put this book down), and firmly grounded in a respect for every human being’s struggles, and victories. Brooklynis a great book and Toibin is a wonderful writer.
