Readalongs with Karen discussion

Here we can discuss our thoughts/questions on finishing Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín.

Just finished it! I have mixed feelings... it left me sad, but maybe that's because I just recently moved away from Brooklyn and related more than I feel comfortable with to how she felt sort of dissociated from the place after having left it. Also her mother at the end... ouch.

That being said, prior to this one, I'd never read any books on NYC from an Irish perspective, and I really loved that.

Katie wrote: "Just finished it! I have mixed feelings... it left me sad, but maybe that's because I just recently moved away from Brooklyn and related more than I feel comfortable with to how she felt sort of di..."
Hi Katie, thanks so much for joining in.
Have you watched the movie too ?

I have finished it today. I am still thinking of Rose. She was a precious character of the book. I want to say "thank you" to every "Rose" that lived and lives all over the world.

Here my short review.

I just finished it. Hated the ending ...

Mela wrote: "I have finished it today. I am still thinking of Rose. She was a precious character of the book. I want to say "thank you" to every "Rose" that lived and lives all over the world.

Here my short re..."
Hi Mela, Katie and Karen, thanks for joining in.
Do you think Eilis would of returned to Brooklyn if Miss Kelly hadn't have said she was cousins with Mrs Kehoe?
Was you happy with the ending and the choices Eilis made ?

I hated the ending, as if the author was/is writing a sequel. I would have given it one more star but it felt unfinished and I wanted to know more.

I think this story was left with a ton of unfinished story lines and 'What ifs".

If Eilis hadn't married Tony, I think she would have stayed in Ireland. I think she felt obligated to Tony but only when she was thinking about him. The Kelly - Kehoe connection just reinforced her need to look good when other people observed her, only then she felt like she had to do the 'right thing'. She is so shallow and immature, I never really liked Eilis.

Throughout this whole book, Eilis never grew up. She just moved from one event to another and never matured from her experiences.

I must add, I'm glad to have read this - it just didn't wow me. lol

I (mostly) prefer other kind of ending too, but sometimes a such unclosed ending fits.

This book was (among others) about growing up and making the life changing decisions. Sometimes you don't make such decisions, you just flow with a current of other people decisions. Eilis most of her life just flowed. The decisions were made by her mother, sister, brothers, the priest, the employer, Tony, even Jim at some point. And no matter how much one would prefer to read only about a strong persons or about people that change to be stronger/better - life isn't so simple and people are different. Eilis wasn't a typical heroine but that was the value of the book.

PS Would she have been happier with Jim?

Mela wrote: "I (mostly) prefer other kind of ending too, but sometimes a such unclosed ending fits.

This book was (among others) about growing up and making the life changing decisions. Sometimes you don't mak..."
Hi Mela and Karen, I thought it was selfish of Eilis's brother Jack to write that letter, making her feel guilty about her mother being left alone.
When Eilis returned to Ireland, she didn't really think of Tony at all. Like you said Mela, she just flowed with what her mother and others wanted her to do.
I'm not sure if Eilis would have been happy if she decided to stay with Jim. I think he would of wanted her to work in the family pub and give up her book keeping.
I couldn't understand why she took those photographs back to America either of her and Jim on the beach.

Karen wrote: "I'm not sure if Eilis would have been happy if she decided to stay with Jim. I think he would of wanted her to work in the family pub and give up her book keeping."

I agree with you, Karen. The question is: What was happiness to her? Perhaps she just flowed with it and was at least content, pleased (if not happy). Just the same like she would have been probably content with Tony...

Karen wrote: "I couldn't understand why she took those photographs back to America either of her and Jim on the beach."

Why not? Perhaps she didn't feel deeply sad and with time (probably faster than we would like) it was just the remembrance of one of the current that she didn't flow. Of course there was a chance of discovering it by Tony, but I think she didn't have a soul for drama and she couldn't imagine one, and she rather hid the photo properly. I think her child discovered the photo after her death, not earlier.

Or (another, different interpretation) she decided that it should be the last time she let other people make decision for her. And the photo was a token.

I really enjoyed this one and agree with everyone and their opinion of Eilis. I think it was more to do with the period of time she was living that it was expected of the single women to take care of elderly relatives, no matter what else was going on with her life. She was the one to make sacrifices and not the others which doesn't seem fair to us now but that was just the way things were.

Karen wrote: "I really enjoyed this one and agree with everyone and their opinion of Eilis. I think it was more to do with the period of time she was living that it was expected of the single women to take care ..." Hi Karen, happy you enjoyed this one too. Thank goodness times have changed for the better nowadays.

I read this some time ago and saw the film. The book is actually quite true to the times in Ireland. The daughter was always expected to look after her parents and that didn't change for a long time. The difference between life in Ireland and life in America in this period could equate to living on the moon and living on earth now.
I'm coming at this from the Irish side so will see it differently. But I agree with a lot of what was said here.

Teresa wrote: "I read this some time ago and saw the film. The book is actually quite true to the times in Ireland. The daughter was always expected to look after her parents and that didn't change for a long tim..."
Hi Teresa, your comment made me smile because my mother's side of the family is Irish too. Women was more or less chained to the kitchen sick back in the days I think !

You're not wrong there Karen!

For such a short book, this one really took me a long time to read it. My feelings about Eilis changed as I thought about the book after finishing. She loved her home in Ireland, but there was at the time nothing there for her. She was young, naive, not thinking much about it, and it was Rose who pushed for her to go. I think of Eilis as a transplanted flower who took awhile to adopt to her new surroundings. She was so alone. The only friend she really made there was Tony. Then when she went back things had changed, and if she hadn’t married Tony, I think she would have stayed.
And because she was a homebody, she would have been happy to stay near her mother and her friend Nancy and to marry Jim. But what I didn’t understand was why she didn’t even tell her mother she had a boy friend or about the marriage. Was it because Tony wasn’t Irish? And I felt so sorry for her mother at the end—Eilis had really led both Jim and her mother on, maybe unthinkingly but rather devastatingly for both of them.

Susan wrote: "For such a short book, this one really took me a long time to read it. My feelings about Eilis changed as I thought about the book after finishing. She loved her home in Ireland, but there was at t..." Hi Susan, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. I wonder if Rose knew she was ill when she suggested Eilis leaving for America? I think she wanted Eilis to travel and work, knowing there wasn't much for her in Ireland. Such a lovely book that will stay with me for a long time I think.

Karen wrote: "Susan wrote: "For such a short book, this one really took me a long time to read it. My feelings about Eilis changed as I thought about the book after finishing. She loved her home in Ireland, but ..."

That’s a great question of whether Rose knew she was ill at the beginning. I’m not sure there are any clues in the book. If Rose knew her death could leave her mother alone at any time, would she have arranged for Eilis to leave? If she found out about her illness when Eilis was settling into her new life in Brooklyn, would she have expected her to come home? I guess we like Eilis will never know. As Mela said, Rose was such a precious character.

I think Rose did know she was ill and wanted Eilis to get away. She knew if she died Eilis would be expected to stay at home with their mother and she would never have any life of her own, never experience anything different. Life in Ireland was very narrow at this time and just about everything was frowned on.

Teresa wrote: "I think Rose did know she was ill and wanted Eilis to get away. She knew if she died Eilis would be expected to stay at home with their mother and she would never have any life of her own, never ex..." I agree Teresa, I think Rose knew she was ill.
I think Rose wanted Eilis to experience life and get away from Ireland. The community back then would of helped look out for their mother.

I agree with those who have said that Rose knew she was ill (and with that knowledge it explains some of the looks and hesitations her character did in the film) she wanted her sister away to live a life on her own without being railroaded by “tradition” into looking after her mother.

Whilst I understand the economic situation in Ireland at the time made jobs scarce, even in the days when women were practically forced to give up work on marriage, it’s hard to see why the attractive Rose and Eilis didn’t manage to find love - after all, we saw the rugby club boys arriving at the dance in an all male pack, and Jim was there and didn’t go near Eilis when Gorge came to Nancy!

I felt that not enough was made of Eilis time in NYC. Did she not feel attracted to any of her fellow students at her book keeping classes? Or at the dance? She’s not stupid, or unattractive, and I’m sure she could have found a better paying office job, found a friend to share a flat with and a more ambitious boyfriend.

Being from Ireland myself, and having lived in a village where everyone knew everyone else - and all their business, I understood why Nettles’ thinly veiled threat made Eilis’ decision to return to America and Tony easier, She realised that the life she though she wanted when she left had its downsides, and she was better off making her own way “somewhere where nobody knows your auntie”.

I would love a sequel - but at least we got snippets of what happened gleaned from Toibin’s book “Nora Webster” where we pick up that Eilis and Tony and their children have visited Mrs Lacey, who seems to have shed the fragility she showed in the first book.