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Cover of Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

Brooklyn

  • 262 pages · about 4 hours
  • First published 2009
  • 10 editions

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1 About this book

In Ireland in the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one of many who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving behind her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation.

Slowly, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of her new life -- and finally, she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. As she falls in love, news comes from home that forces her back to Enniscorthy -- not to the constrictions of her old life, but to new possibilities which conflict deeply with the life she has left behind in Brooklyn.

  • Women immigrants
  • Romance
  • Psychological fiction
  • Romance, historical
  • Social life and customs
  • New york
  • Homecoming
  • Ireland

2 About Colm Tóibín

Born 1955

Colm Tóibín ( KUL-əm toh-BEEN, Irish:; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet. His first novel, The South, was published in 1990. The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Master (a fictionalised version of the inner life of Henry James) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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