Brooklyn
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin 
Blurb: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 -- to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland" -- 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 with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.My ReviewThis book is really hard to review. Part one, I loved. After that, not so much... But I'll start with what I liked. This book does a really good job of portraying what it is like to strike out alone. I've lived abroad and reading about Eilis' homesickness, uncertainty and the feeling of being untethered from everything she knew really struck a cord with me, because I knew exactly how she felt and I though the author was amazing for being able to capture the feeling so well. This book would have been wonderful, if only it had stuck to it's primary focus - a young Irish girl finding herself and her independence after moving to America. However, it was ruined by the romance.I don't like love triangles, so at the end I'd really had enough with this book, however, even before that when she met Tony, the romance just felt so forced. And then there was the worst sex scene I have ever read. It actually made me uncomfortable. And even worse, after this awful sex that is painful for her and which she tries to stop, Eilis, who before hand wasn't sure if she loves Tony, is suddenly saying how deeply she feels for him. I'm sorry, but I have never read anything like that, which was so blatantly written by a man. It put me off the book entirely. All in all, if I'd stopped reading at part one, I'd probably have given this book 5 stars, but carrying on to the end took it all the way down to a 2. :-(
Blurb: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 -- to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland" -- 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 with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.My ReviewThis book is really hard to review. Part one, I loved. After that, not so much... But I'll start with what I liked. This book does a really good job of portraying what it is like to strike out alone. I've lived abroad and reading about Eilis' homesickness, uncertainty and the feeling of being untethered from everything she knew really struck a cord with me, because I knew exactly how she felt and I though the author was amazing for being able to capture the feeling so well. This book would have been wonderful, if only it had stuck to it's primary focus - a young Irish girl finding herself and her independence after moving to America. However, it was ruined by the romance.I don't like love triangles, so at the end I'd really had enough with this book, however, even before that when she met Tony, the romance just felt so forced. And then there was the worst sex scene I have ever read. It actually made me uncomfortable. And even worse, after this awful sex that is painful for her and which she tries to stop, Eilis, who before hand wasn't sure if she loves Tony, is suddenly saying how deeply she feels for him. I'm sorry, but I have never read anything like that, which was so blatantly written by a man. It put me off the book entirely. All in all, if I'd stopped reading at part one, I'd probably have given this book 5 stars, but carrying on to the end took it all the way down to a 2. :-(
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