I’ve been wanting to read Brooklyn for some time but like many other books that slip down my to read list, I’d sort of forgotten it. Then it was found several shelves away from it where it was supposed to be after having gone missing in the library, and so when it turned up, I was reminded, and checked it out.
Brooklyn is the story of Eilis, a young woman in a small town in Ireland in the 1950’s, whose sister Rose arranges her passage to America with a priest, Father Flood, visiting from Brooklyn. Rose and Father Flood set the plan in motion and soon Eilis has a job at Bartocci’s department store and a room at Mrs Kehoe’s boarding house. Eilis isn’t sure this is really the life she wants, but she lets the plans proceed rather than hurt her mother or Rose.
The novel follows her on the voyage, her first days in Brooklyn, her life among the women at work and at Mrs. Kehoe’s. We see her grow into her new life, taking courses in accounting, having a serious boyfriend. It’s a quiet book, closely examining her feelings and observations.
Even though I sometimes wanted to take Eilis aside and tell her to make up her mind, there were things about her that felt familiar and evoked my empathy. The way she did not quite know how to deal with men’s attentions, and how she wanted to be careful of other people’s feelings, for example. Still, even though she grows up a little, she mostly lets life happen to her, unless someone else brings pressure to bear, and then she is redirected.
The ending did leave a few things unpleasantly unresolved — I am not after a tidy ending every time, with i’s dotted and t’s crossed, but Brooklyn ends with several characters lives about to be impacted, and I wanted to know more. I enjoyed the historical details, and the atmospheric feel to the novel, enough to want to see the movie. A diverting, well written book, satisfying enough for a couple of nights.
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