Reviewers have described Brooklyn in terms such as as “quietly magnificent… unhurried, unostentatious prose” (The Telegraph), and “simple and utterly exquisite” (The Spectator).
However, members at our February meeting thought Irish writer, Colm Toibin’s sixth novel was dull, unchallenging, and the story dragged.
They were particularly annoyed at the protagonist, Ellis, and her apparent passivity, lack of honesty and spineless indecision and disloyalty to those around her.
The book is set in the 1950s, initially in Enniscorthy in south east Ireland where Toibin was born.
The story focuses on a young Irish woman, Ellis, who emigrates to Brooklyn in the United States with the help of a Catholic priest who finds her a job in a department store and lodging in a boarding house. She leaves behind her older sister to look after her ageing mother. Her three brothers have already left home for jobs in England.
One horrific scene describes Ellis’s seasickness on board the boat during the crossing, and another describes her terrible homesickness (which the priest helps her with by having her enrol in night courses to keep her mind busy - no Prozac in those days!).
Ellis' life is otherwise mostly uneventful, until she meets a young Italian man, Tony, at a dance. Things are left unsaid in her letters to her mother back home.
The plot finally picks up pace in the last part of the book when Ellis must go back to Ireland after her sister suddenly dies. At Tony’s insistence, Ellis secretly marries him before she leaves. The push and the pull of her romance and newly adopted home, versus her old home and its comforting associations and new temptations, combine to make Part 4 of the book more interesting.
Many members may have seen the movie of Brooklyn but the difference with the book is that the ending is left rather open. While Ellis is finally forced to declare her marriage and book her passage back to the US, she still keeps the photographs of herself and her revived life and new love interest in Enniscorthy in the bottom of her suitcase. The final pages describe the scene of departure from her mother which are unsentimentally written and pull at the heartstrings.
Are you already in a bookclub?
You may feel that you cannot commit to another bookclub because you are already a member of one (or two!)
We’d still love you to join us just as a Newsletter subscriber. We’d love to hear what other bookclubs are reading and what you think are the pick of the titles that we must read!
In the same way, we hope you will take away from our reviews some pearlers to share with your regular club.
