Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

 

Eilis Lacey lives in a small Irish village with her mother and sister.  Her brothers have left to find work and her father died.  Although Eilis did very well in school, she cannot find work in the village.  When a priest offers to sponsor her in the United States, finding her a job and a place to stay, she agrees to go.

She finds herself in Brooklyn, living in a boarding house with other girls and with a job in a department store.  At first, she is terribly homesick but helping the priest at church functions, taking classes at night and going to the weekly dance at the church start to help her fit in.  She meets Tony at the dance, an Italian plumber who is unfailing kind and enthusiastic about life.  He wants to marry her but a disaster back home takes her back to Ireland.  Once there, she is in two minds about returning to Brooklyn.  What will she choose?

Colm Toibin is an Irish author currently living in the United States.  His novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize three times and this was one of them.  Eilis is an interesting character.  She is strong enough to leave Ireland and start a new life, but once here, willing to let her actions be dictated by those around her; the priest, her landlady and her boss at work.  Tony will be everyone's favorite character, he is strong and determined to win Eilis to start a family of their own.  This is an interesting look into the immigrant experience that we all have somewhere in our own backgrounds.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.