Brooklyn is begins in 1950's Wexford, it is about a young girl named Eilis Lacey. Due to difficulty finding a job, Eilis' sister Rose has arranged for her to emmigrate to Brooklyn, New York. Eilis knows this is the only option for her so she leaves all she knows and loves in Ireland and sets off to start her new life in America. This book describes her journey to Brooklyn and the many trials and tribulations she faces when she arrives.
There are many aspects of this novel that stood out to me, these include : the characters, themes, style of writing, cultural context and the author's vision.
I really enjoyed watching the character of Eilis develop through the novel as she adapted to her new life. She started off as a shy timid girl, who depended largely on her family, and grew into an independant capable woman who could fend for herself. She showed great bravery throughout the novel especially when she left Ireland, I found this a very admirable quality in the character of Eilis. I found the charactee easy to connect with and very well portrayed. There were also many other characters that impressed me for example Ms. Kelly, who in my opinion was described impecably, Rose, and Ms. Kehoe.
There was also many interesting themes running through the novel, the one that stood out the most to me is the theme of love. The theme of love mainly featured after Eilis moved to Brooklyn, when she meets Tony, an Italian-American who she meets at a local dance. She almost instantly falls in love with him and his kind gentlemanly manner. She begins her relationship with Tony with a few date, but as the story progresses they begin to see each other more and more until it becomes a daily occurence. They soon marry and make plans for the future, but then a major twist in the plot puts their relationship in jeopardy.
The style of writing used by the author was in some respects good, such as his narrative which was in the third person, which meant we knew everything that was going on and we were not biased towards the views of one particular character and also the authors use of strong poignant imagery. However there was some parts of the style of writing used in this novel that didn't appeal to me, for example the layout of the novel, it was set into four long sections. I felt that this made the novel much too cramped together and in my opinion the use of chapters of about 10-15 pages would have been much better.
The cultural context of the novel was quite interesting. It was set in the 1950's where social classes were very predominant and values were very different to today. There was also quite a huge contrast between the way of life as Eilis moves from Enniscorthy to Brooklyn, This showed me how much more advanced in society Americans were to Irish. I believe the cultural context in this novel gave us a great insight into life back in the 50's and educated us about the time.
The vision of the novel was both optimistic and pessemistic, the optimism was seen in our hope for Eilis, her overcoming of her homesickness, and the prospect of new love. However there was some pessimism in the theme of death and homesickness.
Personally I really enjoyed the novel and I would definately recommend it to people because of the excellent way in which it was written, I believe Colm Toibin is a fantastic author and would definately read another of his books.
