Colm Toibin focuses on reluctant exile in “Brooklyn”

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Colm Toibin’s new novel, “Brooklyn”, garnered substantial press over the weekend. The author’s sixth novel is about a reluctant emigrant from Enniscorthy who moves to the New York borough knowing “the rest of her life would be a struggle with the unfamiliar”. The book reflects on the pangs of homesickness and depicts the struggles of the main character, Eilis as she adapts to a new land fraught with its own struggles and eventually falls in love.  Just as she begins to settle in, Eilis is called home by a family tragedy and must return to Enniscorthy.

The book is receiving widespread critical acclailm.

Related web pages:

• New York Times Magazine: His Irish Diaspora
• New York Times Book Review: ‘Brooklyn,’ by Colm Toibin: The Reluctant Emigrant
• Irish Independent: No place like Colm
• Irish Independent: Delicate portrait of a soul triumphs in Toibin’s tale