Brooklyn (Eilis Lacey Series)

One of the 2016 Read Harder Challenges is to read "a book that was adapted into a movie, then watch the movie. Debate which is better." Knowing that our local theater was going to be showing the movie Brooklyn for Valentine's Day weekend, I chose to read Colm Toibin's novel first. This is not my first time with Toibin, and I have always found him to be an excellent word smith. Brooklyn is not an exception. A beautiful, if at times heartbreaking story, well told--a novel which lives up to every promise made by the author's name. The movie was also very well done, and Saoirse Ronan certainly is worthy of the Oscar nomination she has received for this role. How do the two differ? Well, it's much easier to give background and probe emotions in a 270 page novel as opposed to a 2 hour movie. The first thing I noticed was that the movie dispenses with the entire first quarter of the novel in ten minutes. For the most part, the film adaptation handles the story very well, but friends I talked with were confused as to why the heroine emigrates to America, something that anyone who read the book would understand immediately. It's also not clear in the film just why Eilis doesn't tell her mother that she is married until the very end of her visit. The length of a novel allows the novelist to explore such matters in depth. On that issue, it's not clear in the movie that Eilish has told her sister Rose about Tony, but never mentioned his name to her mother and in fact has asked Rose to keep Tony a secret. Two other discrepancies, one at the beginning and one at the end: Jim Farrell appears in the movie only after Eilis has returned to Ireland. In the book, there's a pivotal scene where she encounters him at a dance before she ever leaves Ireland, and comes away from the experience feeling that he has no interest in her. It is because of that encounter that she teases him boldly when she meets him upon her return home. Her attitude in the movie makes no sense because we don't see what happened between them earlier. Also, the book ends before the movie. The final scene in the novel has Eilis standing on the deck looking out across the Atlantic as she is returning to Brooklyn. The movie has her in Tony's arms, with the two comfortably back together. These are all relatively minor differences, and the movie certainly does a good job of condensing Toibin's novel. I would give both movie and novel five stars, recognizing the differences the two media impose on the story. I recommend both highly.

In "Brooklyn," Colm Tóibín introduces us to Eilis Lacey, a young woman looking to find a place for herself in her small Irish hometown a few years after the end of World War II. She has a good head for figures and would love to find work as a bookkeeper or accountant, but although she has been taking classes, employment opportunities are few and far between, and all she's been able to find so far is part-time work in a shrewish neighbor's grocery shop. Unlike her elegant, outgoing older sister Rose, Eilis doesn't have much of a social life either beyond a couple of close lifelong friends. When a visiting priest offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she dreads leaving the only home she's ever known, but she never seriously considers turning down the offer. In Brooklyn, Eilis keep homesickness at bay by focusing on her department store job during the day, her studies in the evening. Not until the evening she meets Tony, the handsome plumber son of Italian immigrants, at a church dance does she begin to allow herself to set down even the most tenuous emotional roots in the new land. Unfortunately, just as she starts to think she might be ready to accept that her future lies in America with Tony, devastating news arrives from Ireland, and Eilis finds herself caught between two countries, two obligations, two futures that could be hers. There isn't much in the way of a traditional plot here. There's no antagonist, no central conflict, almost no dramatic action. "Brooklyn" is not so much a novel as a slice of life. This is realistic fiction in its purest form, neither one whit more interesting than life itself, nor one whit less. Tóibín's prose is smooth and unobtrusive, and the reader finds himself sinking, as it were, into the flow of another life. We want to know what's going to happen for precisely the same reason that Eilis does, for the same reason we look forward to the unfolding events of our own lives. "Brooklyn" is by turns tense, ambiguous, tedious, and uncomfortably irresolute, because life is all of those things. This is *not* the kind of novel you read to escape reality, but to illuminate it delicately from within. More than anything else, perhaps, "Brooklyn" is a character study of the phlegmatic personality. From the beginning, we see the major decisions in Eilis's life being made by those around her. Her neighbor offers her a part-time job, and she doesn't want to take it, but she does. Her family and Father Flood arrange for her to go to Brooklyn, and she doesn't want to go, but she does. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to know anything about the ending, even in the most general terms.) Although she appears to gain independence and confidence from her experiences in America, it becomes obvious in the end that these changes are merely superficial: the unassuming demeanor is gone, but Eilis again and again betrays her instincts and her principles, and finds herself in the end faced with a dilemma she can't get out of without hurting some of the people she cares about, largely because she can't manage to assert herself at the crucial moment. Even the all-important choice she makes in the end isn't so much chosen as forced upon her by circumstance (including a chain of coincidences that might not seem particularly farfetched in any other novel, but here served as a rude awakening, ten pages before the end, that this was a piece of fiction and not a rich slice of history after all). "Brooklyn" is a lovely little book with a light touch that belies its true depths. Readers looking for escape, high drama, or wholly affirmative character development are likely to be disappointed, but those willing to immerse themselves in the narrative and let the flow of events carry them to the end, however unsatisfying, are likely to find themselves strangely satisfied for all that.

I first read this book a year or so ago and found it quite forgettable. More recently I saw that my own favorite writer had written glowing comments about it on his Facebook page and then I saw the movie was coming out, so I thought "Wow, I must have really missed something--let me read this again." Turns out it truly was forgettable, because as I read it the second time I only had the barest notions of what was going to happen. SPOILER ALERT: Basically, Eilis comes to America for no particular reason except that apparently her family decided to send her. She just passively accepts and goes, and she lives in a boarding house that's neither wonderful nor intolerable, she gets a job that's neither horrible nor great. Ho hum. So this goes along for a while until I was thinking there was clearly nothing for her to look forward to--ever!--besides the prospect of meeting someone to marry. So then she meets the wonderful, handsome, clean, kind, thoughtful etc. etc. etc, Tony. I thought surely Tony would prove to be less wonderful than he seemed, or maybe she'd find out he was illiterate or something, but again--zero drama, he's exactly what he seems and yet she doesn't love him or hate him, she just kinda goes along. Finally after wonderful Tony has been patiently squiring her around for a couple of years or something, Eilis must return home for a visit due to a death in the family. Tony asks her to marry him (privately, at the courthouse) before she goes, just as an insurance policy because he doubts she'll return. By then she's decided what the heck, she guesses she'll keep him, so she marries him. Like it's no big deal. Then she goes home to Ireland and IMMEDIATELY takes up with some random guy she only met once before. She thinks to herself how hurt Tony would be, but oh well, she keeps on with it. She's in no hurry to go home. Eventually she figures out somebody's going to be hurt either way but she's not exactly anguished about it. Then finally when somebody threatens to spill the beans that she is actually married, suddenly she's on the next boat home. The end. Well WTF. Are we supposed to LIKE this protagonist? Because all I could think was how totally disloyal she was. I didn't empathize with her "dilemma" of having two men in her life at all, I just disapproved of her conduct. I found a lot of loose ends in this story, too. For example--if her landlady Mrs. Kehoe who liked her so much actually had a relative in Eilis's hometown and the two of them were discussing Eilis, why would Mrs Kehoe never have said "Hey, guess what, my cousin says you used to work in her store!" And what was the whole thing with Miss Fortini acting all lesbian about the bathing suits and then nothing about that is ever mentioned again? And the letters from Tony that arrived while she was in Ireland but she never read them--I was thinking something important would be in there, but nope, we never find out, she never bothers to open them. And when she does decide to leave Ireland, she just drops old Jim a note to say "See ya," despite the fact that he said he didn't know what he'd do if he lost her again. So anyway, I'll be curious to see what kind of movie they make out of this. It was a highly unsatisfying tale in my opinion.

It was an interesting book. To see how some Irish fared in the new world and what they made of their lives. Yet others were looked down upon by their own people. The class levels were alive and strong back then. Disappointing they couldn't/wouldn't help each other. Eilish was a disappointing character.

At the end of <i>Brooklyn</i>, I could see people debating Jim Farrell in Ireland and Tony Fiorello in Brooklyn, as the better match for Eilis Lacey. Just as readers of <i>The Hunger Games</i> lined up in Gale and Peeta camps for Katnis. This story is much different. A few days after I finished the book I watched the movie, which I enjoyed. The film helped clarify some things, and, of course, could bring out the humor and visuals better. Seeing the film so soon after finishing the book, I knew what scenes were left out, and knew what lines were coming. <i>Brooklyn</i> is not one story. It is not simply an immigrant story of a young Irish woman immigrating to Brooklyn. It is not a nostalgic look at Brooklyn. Actually, you don’t learn much about Brooklyn except for where Eilis lived and worked, Tony and his brothers taking Eilis to a Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field (left out of the movie), Tony taking her to Coney Island, and Eilis taking bookkeeping courses at Brooklyn College—my mother’s alma mater! It’s about the tugs of your native home and heritage and being transported to a small piece of Brooklyn, where there is a melting pot of Irish, Norwegians, Jews, Italians and probably more ethnic groups, your new home. At the end, what is the true home? In small Enniscorthy, it was expected this would be where one would live and stay, marry someone in the town, and the cycle continues. For young women, moving up was marrying into wealth. Then, women don’t have to worry if they have a job or not. Everyone knows about everybody else, and their business. There can be pros and cons to that. The story is about secrets and how damaging it can be to hide behind them. Eilis—it took about 100 pages and a second Kindle to realize her name was not Ellis :)—is the youngest child. Her father has died. Her sister, Rose, is 30, has good jobs as a bookkeeper and golf teacher, but still lives at home. Three brothers have left for better job opportunities elsewhere in Ireland or England (omitted from the film). It is not clear how old Eilis is, probably late teens, early 20s. She is given an opportunity for a better life in Brooklyn by Father Flood, a friend of Rose’s, who now lives in Brooklyn. Eilis realizes Rose will now have to be the caretaker of their mother and probably not have a life of her own or get married. Why hadn’t she taken the opportunity to go to America? This is not a case of escaping the Irish famine or religious persecution like other early 20th century immigrants. It’s 1950. The Laceys aren’t poor, but job possibilities were scarce. She could have easily stayed and continued to work in the evil Miss Kelly’s grocery store. Before she leaves she learns Father Flood has secured her a job in the Bartocci’s Department Store, and lodging in Mrs. Kehoe’s rooming house. No sweatshops and tenements for her. She is now in another Irish conclave. The widowed owner of the house, Mrs. Kehoe, is Irish. All the women lodgers are Irish, but some have been here longer and are somewhat snobby. They believe their working in offices is better than Eilis working on the floor of Bartocci’s. Eilis does aspire to be a bookkeeper in an office. They all go to the Irish dances run by Father Flood at the church Friday nights, because, of course, you still want to meet an Irish “fella.” She doesn't feel a closeness to the other boarders or people at work, and with the letters from home, is terribly homesick, as any immigrant might. Father Flood enrolls her in accounting, bookkeeping courses and a law class at Brooklyn College, paid by a congregant, to help kill those empty times, but also knowing she aspired to be a bookkeeper. She struggled through the law course, but I wondered if in the end she would become a lawyer. Maybe, she does, the book doesn’t go that far into the future. Tony asks Eilis to dance at one of the Irish dances. As he walks her home, he discloses he’s Italian. “So why not go to Italian dances?” “I like Irish girls.” “You have prior experience with Irish girls?” Tony is one of four boys, the youngest eight, who live with their parents in a small apartment. Tony is a plumber, somewhat shy, somewhat outgoing, polite, a listener. Then, Eilis receives the shocking news (spoiler alert) Rose has died. She had kept her illness a secret. Did she know she was ill before Eilis had left for America? Is that the other reason she did not go to America? What was touching was Father Flood said a Mass for Rose, Tony’s family prayed for her and the girls and Mrs. Kehoe were supportive. Eilis realizes she should return to Ireland for a month. Fearful she might stay permanently, Tony convinces Eilis to marry him before she leaves. It will be their secret. Throughout the book, Eilis constantly battled with herself over decisions of how she should act or respond. Now, she had two secrets as she headed “home.” Rose was the only one she had confided in about Tony. She had not written her own friends about it. Now, she was married. It would haunt her for the next month or so. The return also showed off certain expectations of the people in Enniscorthy, and the contrast between the “close” small town and Brooklyn, a big city in its own right in the shadow of Manhattan. Her friend Nancy is marrying George Sheridan, who is from a well-to-do family. Two years before, she was ecstatic when George danced with her the whole night. Eilis’ mother had confirmed they were both coming to the wedding, even though Eilis was scheduled to return before the wedding. She had to extend her stay. When George and Nancy invite Eilis out with them, they bring along Jim Farrell, who had been rude to Eilis at the dance two years ago. She is upset with Nancy because she will be going home. Plus she has the secret. She goes out with Jim Farrell. He is somewhat like Tony, polite and shy. He is to take over his parents’ pub and home. Eilis can’t make herself tell Nancy, her mother, who is dominating her time, and worst, she can’t tell Jim, she is married. He drives Eilis and her mother to Nancy's wedding. Her mother is so proud. Meanwhile, the place where Rose worked asks Eilis to fill in. What was amazing was the expectation that Eilis was staying permanently, no matter what she said. Her mother expected her to stay. When the boss at the job says we’ll have to see whether the job will be permanent, Eilis replies she will be going back to America. He says, “No firm decisions have been made.” The dynamics of a small town is shown when Jim tells Eilis, Rose’s death was the biggest news in the town in a long time. While a tragic death, to be the biggest event in the town says a lot. In Brooklyn, it wouldn’t have effected many people beyond the family and close friends. Yet, Jim Farrell is not a bad catch. But, Tony’s letters come almost daily. Watching the movie, my wife is saying, “Why can’t she tell anyone?” Eilis needs to make a choice. No matter what the choice is, she is going to hurt a shy, sensitive man. Rose’ secret killed her. What will be Eilis’ choice? Colm Tóibín's writing is beautiful.

We first meet Eilis Lacey in her small town in Ireland: Enniscorthy, on Friary Street. The author sweeps us up into the world of the Lacey family: her sister Rose and her sad mother; the town, with some of the young people; and the shops. It is the 1950s, revealed to us in the styles, mannerisms, and expectations of the times. Rose has a good job for the local mills, but there are few possibilities for Eilis, with only a dull job in a local shop to bring in a little extra money for the family. A situation which inspires Father Flood to begin talking about an opportunity for her in America, in Brooklyn, where many Irish people have settled. Soon the plan is in place, and the details of how it all comes about bring the reader into the moments of leaving; of the passage, with all the sea sickness; the newness of a life beyond the village. After her arrival, she moves into a boarding house arranged by Father Flood, which consists of Mrs. Kehoe, a rather controlling woman, and several young women. Eilis has work in a nice shop, and soon is taking night classes to become a bookkeeper. Dances, church, charity events…her life fills up and becomes routine. When she meets Tony, a young Italian boy at a dance, everything begins to change. What happens near the end of the second year that changes everything for Eilis? How will she deal with revisiting the old village to see her mother after a family tragedy? What will become of her and Tony? What dilemma will Eilis face upon her return to Ireland? Brooklyn: A Novel was the kind of story that might seem quiet and even ordinary, on the surface, but the rich details and the vivid portrayals of the various characters kept me engrossed all the way through, experiencing a new life along with Eilis, feeling her awe at each new event. Like baseball, hot dogs, Coney Island. And love. I felt swept away by how the author showed us Eilis’s inner thoughts as she came to some decisions. I enjoyed watching the interactions between the young women in the boarding house, and loving how Eilis was learning how to stand up for herself. And after her return visit to Enniscorthy, I appreciated how her time in America had changed her, how we could see her growth as she dealt with her demanding mother and her old friends. I could now imagine how her future would unfold. 5 stars.

Some novels, regardless of their length, are big, with their weighty issues, larger-than-life characters and major plot twists. Other books are smaller, and although they may not be characterized by a great deal of drama or action, they still have some weight to them. Colm Toibin's Brooklyn definitely falls in the latter category. It is the early 1950s in Ireland, and Eilis Lacey spends her life blending into her surroundings. Her older sister has a job in Dublin, her brothers have moved to England and even her friends are heading toward marriage. After Eilis finds a job where she is treated like a servant, her sister and an Irish priest in America arrange for her to move to Brooklyn, where she will live in a rooming house with other Irish girls and work in a store until she can find an office job. She experiences some homesickness and struggles with the same feelings of inadequacy until she meets Tony, an Italian plumber who is clearly devoted to her, and starts to introduce her to life in America (complete with Coney Island and a Brooklyn Dodgers game). And as they begin planning for their future, she receives disturbing news from Ireland, which sets a number of events into motion. Toibin is a great writer, and I always marvel at his ability to infuse "everyday" situations with a kind of poetry. I felt the buildup to Eilis' move to America took too long, although it did lay a foundation for what occurred later in the story, but once Eilis settled into her life and became a bit more animated, I felt the book hit its stride. I liked many of the characters, and disliked the ones you clearly were supposed to, and found the way Toibin unfurled the story was really compelling, even if it did so with more of a whisper than a scream. All in all, I enjoyed this book, even if it lacked the "punch" I was hoping for. (I'd also recommend several of Toibin's earlier books, including The Blackwater Lightship, The Story of the Night and The Master.)

I can think of very few times when I liked a movie better than the book, but this is one of them. Where the screenwriter and director and actress succeeded, the author failed. Hollywood took Toibin’s story and created a charming character in Eilis, a girl whose endearing kindness made us love her; this from the author’s one-dimensional character who either did not feel emotions or would not reveal them. We are given, by Toibin, all the vapid details of her life but not her reaction to them, and although we want to connect with this girl, we are not allowed to do so. When she leaves the dance with Tony and he asks, for the first time, if she will go with him again next week, we don’t get elation, we don’t get intimacy or sexual tension, we don’t recognition that someone likes us and is willing to risk rejection for us. We get: “Eilis realized that this invitation would mean that she could go to the dance without having to take the feelings of any of her fellow lodgers into account.” What? Seriously? What is perhaps most disquieting is the praise heaped on this book by the literary establishment. The publishing industry is an embarrassing clutch of inbred New York literati who stand as self-appointed gatekeepers while keeping company with a complicit establishment of editorial critics. As long as they keep reminding each other of their brilliance and superiority, all is well. It is infuriating to read how Toibin’s writing in Brooklyn is “spare” and has “remarkable power,” etc. This is utter nonsense. Shame on you all. While some of Toibin’s other work may achieve these heights, Brooklyn most certainly does not. The writing is not “spare,” it is simply simple. Juvenile. Sophomoric. Something you’d expect to get from a second-year English-lit student. It has a “See Spot run” sort of quality, as if the writer couldn’t decide if he was writing a children’s book or an adult novel. There’s nary a well-crafted, insightful sentence to be found. Toibin seems to have forgotten the concept of authorial irony and the subtleties of narrative that flow from such irony, the enjoyment it evokes for the reader. There is an unending train of “she thought”s and “she felt”s and “she knew that”s even though we Think we Know what she Felt without being told at every turn. The ending, if you can get there, is well done. But a good ending does not justify the means when it comes to a novel. See the movie instead.

Colm Toibin is the winner of the Costa Book Award and Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Brooklyn. The story is set in Ireland and Brooklyn in the 1950s after World War Two. Eilis Lacey lives in the town of Enniscorthy with her mother, a widow with a small pension and her dynamic and glamorous sister, Rose. Her three brothers, Jack, Pat and Martin left home for Birmingham in search of work. Rose works in the office of Davis's Mills and earns a very good salary. Her wages pay for most of their needs. She belongs to a golf club and surrounds herself with affluent people. Eilis has taken bookkeeping classes and is good with numbers and details. The only job available was working in a grocery shop on Sundays for Miss Kelly, the owner. She is a mean spirited woman, who once gave Eilis a stale bread to take home to her mother. Rose feels that Eilis could do much better than that. Rose hears that Father Flood is in Ireland to visit his family. He now lives in the U.S. and has his parish in Brooklyn. Rose played golf with Father Flood and she sets up an appointment. She speaks to him about Eilis and how difficult it is to get a job and to meet men. He tells Rose that Brooklyn has great opportunities for a young person and he will speak to one of his parishioners, an Italian merchant. When Father Flood returns to Brooklyn, his Italian parishioner, who owns a department store, has an opening on the floor for a sales person. If she does well, there would be plenty of opportunity to advance. Father Flood tells Rose how to proceed. She phones a friend in the American Embassy and was sent the required documents. Rose arranges everything. Father Flood wrote a formal letter sponsoring Eilis and guaranteeing to take care of her accommodations as well as her general welfare. A letter arrives from Bartocci and Company in Brooklyn offering Eilis a permanent position in their main store. Her brothers agree to pay her passage to New York and Rose would give her money to live until she gets settled. Eilis is sorry to have to leave her family, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for her. On the ship, she shares a berth with Georgina. Eilis is sea sick the entire journey, but Georgina explains that she too experienced sea sickness, when the weather conditions are not good. Finally, she arrives and is met by Father Flood, who takes her to the boarding house where she will live. It is close to work and to the parish. The owner is Mrs. Kehoe and she is from Wexford town. There are five other boarders there. She soon begins work in the department store and begins to feel homesick. She makes a visit to Father Flood and tells him how she feels. He immediately enrols her in night classes in bookkeeping and accountancy, three times a week for two years. Upon completion and she passes her exams, she will be a licensed bookkeeper. She is also a member of the parish and goes to the Friday night dances with the other boarders. It is there that she meets Tony, who comes from a large Italian family. He falls in love with her and she is slowly falling in love too. Father Flood meets him and speaks with him and finds him to be a nice chap. As her feelings for Tony grow stronger, she receives devastating news from Ireland, which now threatens her entire future. Colm Toibin has written a most beautiful story that touched my heart. His writing is simple, elegant, pure and profound. I loved the characters he created like Eilis, a highly moral young lady, loyal and intelligent and Rose, a dynamic and beautiful human being, who loves and lives life to the fullest and at the same time, looking after her dear mother and beloved sister, Eilis. I loved Brooklyn and highly recommend it.

All'inizio del romanzo, Eilis conduce una vita relativamente protetta. Tuttavia, la lunga storia dell'immigrazione irlandese negli Stati Uniti è rimasta intatta, motivo per cui Eilis trova una comunità irlandese così coesa quando arriva a Brooklyn.

Main character seems to have no particular emotions and the backbone of a jellyfish, which left me wondering: what was the point of this novel? At least it didn't take much time to read.

J'ai acheté ce livre parce que nous devions le lire pour en anglais. J'avais peur de ne rien comprendre et de ne pas trouver la lecture agréable. Finalement il s'est révélé que ce livre se lit tout seul, les tournures de phrases sont simples, le vocabulaire ne pose pas non plus de gros problème de compréhension. L'histoire est intéressante, mais c'est écrit très simplement. Je le recommande vivement aux personnes qui aimeraient approfondir leur anglais et qui débute dans la lecture de livre étrangère. Peut-être que pour ceux qui ont déjà une excellente maîtrise de la langue le livre va se révéler simplet.

Such a lovely story, I really found it hard to put down. The author has such a lovely way of writing when one thing flows seamlessly into the next. I did watch the film before reading some time ago and things were slightly different so knew the outcome, but an excellent read.