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Synopsis

In a small town in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. So when a job is offered in America, it is clear that she must go. Leaving her family and home, Eilis sets off to forge a new life for herself in Brooklyn. Young, homesick and alone, she gradually buries the pain of parting beneath the rhythms of a new life - days at the till in a large department store, night classes in Brooklyn College and Friday evenings on the dance floor of the parish hall - until she realizes that she has found a sort of happiness. But when tragic news summons her back to Ireland, and the constrictions of her old life unexpectedly give way to new possibilities, she finds herself facing a terrible choice: between love and happiness in the land where she belongs and the promises she must keep on the far side of the ocean.

Brooklyn is a tender story of great love and loss, and of the heartbreaking choice between personal freedom and duty. In the character of Eilis Lacey Colm Tóibín has created a remarkable heroine and in Brooklyn a novel of devastating emotional power.

Read an exclusive short story by Colm Tóibín, courtesy of FT.com.

Reviews

Customer Review: 24 January 2010

Reviewer: Gavin

'It is the beacon of light novel for everyone who plans to go to America!'

Critic Review:

‘Socially fascinating, suffused with humane depth, funny, affecting, deftly plotted and written with a subtlety that packs powerful effects into simple-seeming prose, this is a novel of magnificent accomplishment.’
Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

‘A profoundly gifted world writer.’
Sebastian Barry, Guardian

‘This novel contains, among other things, the most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time.’
Zoë Heller, Guardian

‘It stood out for its ability to use surface simplicity to mask (for a time) vast depths of emotional and psychological complexity’.
John Lanchester Guardian

‘A piercing story about how quietly and unexpectedly and irrevocably things can go wrong. Pin-perfect psychological realism.’
Sam Leith, Daily Mail

‘This beautiful book reads like a story that didn’t make it into Dubliners, but easily could have’.
Paul Muldoon, TLS

‘Tóibín’s perfection is simply the unobtrusive vehicle of this surprisingly complex adventure.’
Graham Robb, TLS

‘ It isn’t just a book for Christmas; a work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life.’
Ali Smith, TLS

‘My book of the year is Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn, a profound, deceptively slight novel of immense humanity, wit and subtlety. By far the best novel of 2009.’
Robert McCrum, The Lady

‘Elegant and controlled, Colm Tóibín's  Brooklyn, the tale of Eilis, a young woman who emigrates from Ireland to America in the 1950s, is the book that broke my heart this year.’
David Vann, Observer

‘No book this year gave me greater pleasure, and I was only sorry to have to let her (Eilis) go.’
Nell Freudenberger, FT

‘This wonderful novel illustrates how  Colm Tóibín is just getting better and better.’
Independent

‘A beautifully crafted work that transformed ordinary lives into something extraordinary.’
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Saturday Telegraph

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