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Costa Award 2009 : Novel of the Year Winner
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 heart-breaking choice between personal freedom and duty. This is the latest novel by gay author Toibin, widely considered one of the best writers in the English language.
Note: this novel has NO gay content
Author: Colm Toibin
Paperback, 272 Pages, Published 2010
"A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment, it could haunt your life" Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement, 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
"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 fiction 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
"Tremendously moving and powerful" New Statesman