Brooklyn (Reprint) (Paperback) by Colm Toibin

About the Book

From the author of "The Master" comes a moving novel about a young immigrant in 1950's Brooklyn who is torn between her Irish roots and the man who wins her heart.

Book Synopsis

First published in hardcover to vigorous praise, Colm Toibin's New York Times bestselling novel is about a young Irish immigrant in Brooklyn in the early 1950s.

"One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.

Review Quotes

[A] triumph... One of those magically quiet novels that sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations.
-- USA Today

"Reading Tóibín is like watching an artist paint one small stroke after another until suddenly the finished picture emerges to shattering effect.... Brooklyn stands comparison with Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady."
-- The Times Literary Supplement (U.K.)

"Tóibín ... [is] his generation's most gifted writer of love's complicated, contradictory power."
-- Floyd Skoot, Los Angeles Times

"A classical coming-of-age story, pure, unsensationalized, quietly profound... There are no antagonists in this novel, no psychodramas, no angst. There is only the sound of a young woman slowly and deliberately stepping into herself, learning to make and stand behind her choices, finding herself."
-- Pam Houston, O, the Oprah Magazine

About The Author

Colm Tóibín is the author of ten novels, including The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.