Perhaps
you would rather see the film before reading the book? To me, the book
will always come first and I don't mind knowing the story when I go to
see the film. I will still enjoy the film. Plus the film is usually
not a 100% accurate portrayal of the original story, and I prefer the
book every time. Whatever way around you do it - book then film, film
then book or just film or book, I would love to hear your thoughts on
Brooklyn. Here are mine, after a short summing up of the story -
Eilis
Lacey has lived in the village of Enniscorthy in County Wexford her
whole life. She lives with her widowed mother and her older sister Rose.
Her sister Rose is the breadwinner for the family, and there are few
prospects for girls in Ireland in the 1950s to have a career. Getting
married and having a family are usually the way forward. However Rose
has other plans for Eilis, and she, her mother and a well-meaning
priest, Father Flood work on a plan for Eilis’s life. Eilis soon
discovers that a job and a new life in Brooklyn await. She accepts this
with equanimity, although we are to discover that the women in this
family never tell each other how they are really feeling and this is the
tragedy of this story.
Eilis doesn’t want to go to America, but feels she has no choice but to accept the path laid out for her, Tóibín
writes; “She had expected that she would find a job in the town, and
then marry someone and give up the job and have children. Now, she felt
that she was being singled out for something for which she was not in
any way prepared.”
In
Brooklyn Eilis is given lodgings with a Mrs Kehoe, along with some
other female lodgers. She works on the shop floor of a department store
called Bartocci’s. Following an initial period of numbness, followed by a
severe case of being homesick, once she realizes the reality of her
situation, Eilis settles down to life in Brooklyn and begins studying to
become a bookkeeper. After a few months she meets an American called
Tony at the local Parish dance organized by Father Flood. Love blossoms
and it seems she may have found her happy ever after. However, when she
is called back to Ireland following a family tragedy, she must make the
ultimate choice between love and duty.
I was a fan of Colm Tóibín
before reading this book, but now I would say I am a super fan! The
story will definitely go into my list of favourite reads of all time. Tóibín
portrays the dynamics of family life in Ireland in the fifties with
such accuracy and subtlety, that I could almost feel myself there. Eilis
respects her mother and sister and behaves accordingly. At times I
wanted to scream with frustration that she wouldn’t tell them how she
was feeling, and yet I understood how and why she couldn’t. Was the
choice she made in America a type of revenge? I don’t believe so. I
think it was sincerely done with no thought that she wouldn’t return.
Did
she make the right choice? I think it was a choice between the head and
the heart, and she made the ultimate sacrifice and went with duty and
the head. For me she is a heroine for that reason.
What
I loved about this book was how the author shows how place plays such a
significant part in our lives. We can live in one place and when we are
away from it for a while, it seems like a dream. Eilis states that Tony
seems; “part of a dream from which she had woken.” Yet she is
emotionally aware that if she returned to Brooklyn, then it would be her
life in Enniscorthy that would seem like a dream. It is also a clever
working of the plot that it is the nasty Miss Kelly who she worked for
in Enniscorthy, before departing for Brooklyn, who discovers her secret
and forces her decision.
I
found it such a poignant book and found myself crying at several points
during the story, sometimes without even realizing there were tears
sliding down my face. In particular the author’s description of how it
feels to be homesick: "All this came to her like a terrible weight and
she felt for a second that she was going to cry. It was as though an
ache in her chest was trying to force tears down her cheeks despite her
enormous effort to keep them back. She did not give in to whatever it
was. She kept thinking, attempting to work out what was causing this new
feeling that was like despondency, that was like how she felt when her
father died and she watched them closing the coffin, the feeling that he
would never see the world again and she would never be able to talk to
him again."
It
reminded me, I suppose, of my own journeys back and forth from Zambia
to Ireland as a child and teenager. Thank goodness I never had to face a
choice like she did. I don’t think I would have had the strength.
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