Editions

Brooklyn

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780241972700

  • Length: 272  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 17mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 191g

  • RRP: £8.99

Brooklyn

Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom.

It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.

Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.

'With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork' Sunday Times

'Unforgettable' Spectator

'The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time' Zoë Heller Guardian, Books of the Year

'Magnificent' Sunday Telegraph

'A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life' Ali Smith TLS, Books of the Year

When you are finished why not read the companion novel Nora Webster.

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780241972700

  • Length: 272  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 17mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 191g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork

    Sunday Times

  • The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time

    Zoë Heller, Guardian, Books of the Year

  • A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life

    Ali Smith, TLS, Books of the Year

  • Suffused with humane depth, funny, affecting, deftly plotted ... a novel of magnificent accomplishment

    Peter Kemp, Sunday Times, Novel of the Year

  • Brooklyn moved me more than any other book this year

    Nicholas Hytner, Observer, Books of the Year

  • A beautifully crafted work that transformed ordinary lives into something extraordinary

    Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

  • No book this year gave me greater pleasure

    Nell Freudenberger, Financial Times

  • Not a sentence or a thought out of place. It takes over as his finest ficiton to date

    Irish Times

  • Remarkable freshness and immediacy ... with a lovely comedic lightness

    Daily Mail

  • A lovely, thoughtful book ... alive with authentic detail, moved along by the ripples of affection and doubt that shape any life: a novel that offers the reader serious pleasure

    Daily Telegraph

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About the Author

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of nine novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, has won the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award. His most recent novel is House of Names. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. He lives in Dublin.

Colm Tóibín

Related articles

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Features

Colm Tóibín: why I left Ireland for Ancient Greece

Colm Tóibín on why he left his hometown behind to explore a family drama in the royal households of Ancient Greece in House of Names.
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Extracts

Colm Tóibín on Baldwin’s confessional Giovanni’s Room

James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a mainstay on lists of LGBTQ classics. In this introduction from the new Everyman edition, Colm Tóibín unravels the intimately confessional style that draws this beautiful book into so many readers’ hearts
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Podcasts

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín joins Richard E. Grant in the Penguin studio to talk about the novel behind the Oscar-nominated film Brooklyn

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