Julie's Reviews > Brooklyn

Thinking again about this lovely book, nearly seven years after I first read it, how it has stayed with me, how Tóibín has moved and influenced me as a reader and a writer.

Original Review, posted June 7, 2009


This gentle, quietly resonant novel showed me a new side of Colm Tóibín's writing. At first blush it seems a simple coming-of-age story of a young Irish immigrant alone in New York. But Tóibín, though he writes with affection, keeps enough distance from his characters to allow his reader to form opinions about the choices these characters make and the motivations behind their actions.

He shows, rather than tells, the bewilderment and liberation that are part of a willing immigrant's experience; how the absence of the familiar can lead one to behave in bold or reckless or shameful ways. He also captures perfectly the returned immigrant's experience—the reverse culture shock that occurs when returning to one's homeland. The immigrant, the sojourner, has changed, yet everything and everyone at home remains as it was. Tóibín reveals this sense of dislocation, how it feels to be of both worlds yet not belonging fully to either. Tóibín allows Eilis, his young immigrant, to experience her life without clouding her actions in pop-psychology self-awareness. This is a gracious, sweet and subtle story from a master of nuance and heart.