by Colm Tóibín
“Toibin’s genius is that he makes it impossible for us to walk away…”, is the dust cover blurb that caught my eye. I had read an article that hailed Colm Toibin, the author of “Brooklyn” as a leading light of the new wave of Irish writers. A few chapters into the book, I wasn’t about to walk away. An easy, uncluttered style of story telling held my interest as the book’s heroine, Eilis Lacey found herself, against her will, in a claustrophobic third class cubby hole on an ocean liner bound for America.
An older sister, Rose, had made the decision for Eilis that she should leave an unpromising life in the village of Enniscorthy, Ireland. With the help of Father Flood, a priest visiting from his parish in Brooklyn, Rose arranged for her sister to immigrate to America. After five seasick days crossing a stormy Atlantic, Eilis arrived at the custom sheds of a New York port. Helped by a doughty English woman who had befriended her while sharing their third class births, Eilis passed the test of entering a new land, and found the boarding house where she would begin a new life.
The lodgings chosen by Father Flood for Eilis were in the home of Mrs. Kehoe, who had come from Wexford town in Ireland many years before. She would prove to be a stern landlady who also enforced house rules for four other tenants sharing board and room with Eilis.
Sharing life beneath the same roof with “prim” Miss McAdam from Belfast,, “man-mad” Patty McGuire from upstate New York and Diana Montini, whose mother was Irish, would be a teaching ground for Eilis in the next two years.
A job for Eilis had been secured by the resourceful Father Flood at Bartocci’s Department Store. As Eilis proves herself with the worth ethic instilled growing up in an Irish village, she is encouraged to take on bookkeeping classes at a Brooklyn college. Gradually the homesickness and pain caused by leaving her childhood home is pushed aside by the incessant rhythms of Brooklyn. At a parish church dance, she finds love and the promise of a new life.
News comes from home, and Eilis is called back to Enniscorthy. She is faced with two possibilities for her future. Toibin has quietly with spare language made Eilis so believable that the conflict she must resolve, and the decision she must make seems much like one of the reader’s own. Colm Toibin has provided a rare reading pleasure crafted with unpretentious skill.
An older sister, Rose, had made the decision for Eilis that she should leave an unpromising life in the village of Enniscorthy, Ireland. With the help of Father Flood, a priest visiting from his parish in Brooklyn, Rose arranged for her sister to immigrate to America. After five seasick days crossing a stormy Atlantic, Eilis arrived at the custom sheds of a New York port. Helped by a doughty English woman who had befriended her while sharing their third class births, Eilis passed the test of entering a new land, and found the boarding house where she would begin a new life.
The lodgings chosen by Father Flood for Eilis were in the home of Mrs. Kehoe, who had come from Wexford town in Ireland many years before. She would prove to be a stern landlady who also enforced house rules for four other tenants sharing board and room with Eilis.
Sharing life beneath the same roof with “prim” Miss McAdam from Belfast,, “man-mad” Patty McGuire from upstate New York and Diana Montini, whose mother was Irish, would be a teaching ground for Eilis in the next two years.
A job for Eilis had been secured by the resourceful Father Flood at Bartocci’s Department Store. As Eilis proves herself with the worth ethic instilled growing up in an Irish village, she is encouraged to take on bookkeeping classes at a Brooklyn college. Gradually the homesickness and pain caused by leaving her childhood home is pushed aside by the incessant rhythms of Brooklyn. At a parish church dance, she finds love and the promise of a new life.
News comes from home, and Eilis is called back to Enniscorthy. She is faced with two possibilities for her future. Toibin has quietly with spare language made Eilis so believable that the conflict she must resolve, and the decision she must make seems much like one of the reader’s own. Colm Toibin has provided a rare reading pleasure crafted with unpretentious skill.
Reviewed by Don Mac Brown
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