Irish Connoisseur's Irish Book Club

Brooklyn
by Colm Toibin

"A classical coming of age story, pure, unsensationalized, quietly profound, Eilis Lacey, unable to find suitable employment in small-town, post-World War II Ireland, ships off to Brooklyn for the promise of a job in a clothing shop, a room in an Irish-Only boarding house, and the part-time friendship of her sponsor, the charismatic and persuasive Father Flood. In America Eilis discovers all manner of things unimaginable to those she leaves behind in Enniscorthy: Coney Island, Ebbets Field, heat that stays on all night in winter, and soul-wrenching homesickness she can scarcely shake off. 

 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 able to withstand hardship (a storm at sea or the death of a loved one), growing into the wisdom that fate will render all our choices irrelevant in the end." 

- Pam Houston