Colm Tòibìn: Brooklyn

If I had to use only one word to describe Colm Tòibìn's novel Brooklyn it would be 'understated'. It's the story of a young girl, Eilis Lacey, who lives in the small Irish town of Enniscorthy with her mother and older sister Rose, in the hard years following World War Two. Her father has died and her brothers have moved to England to work, so the three women are the only ones left in the household. Through an Irish priest living in Brooklyn, Eilis's move to America is arranged, so that she may find a better job and life, while her sister stays behind with their fragile mother. Just when Eilis is starting to make a home for herself in America - thanks to work in a department store and the love of an Italian-American plumber named Tony - devastating news from home unexpectedly calls her back to Ireland. At the end she must decide whether to return to Tony and her new life, or to settle into her hometown, which suddenly seems more appealing than it ever did.

I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but in any case, what makes this novel beautiful isn't so much the story itself, but the way it's written. Tòibìn's writing is gentle and steadily paced. There are no great climaxes in Eilis's story, or rather, they are so well prepared that tension rises steadily throughout the novel. Eilis is an unusual heroine, not the feisty strong-willed girl who one normally finds, typically in young-adult fiction. She is rather passive, never standing up for what she wants, barely knowing what it is she wants most of the time. Her life just seems to gradually "be arranged" for her by her family, father Flood, her employers - who are on the other hand all quite strong characters. Nevertheless, Eilis is a very likeable character, sensitive and honest. The narrator focuses on her the entire time, making us readers root for her from the start. That's what makes her submissiveness all the more heart-wrenching. The writing is simple and the tone controlled. But strong emotions are conjured through a hushed tone of plainness but also humor. This, I think, is one of the novel's strongest features: the tone of humor constantly suppressed. Especially the dialogue can be lightly comic, without indulging in full-fledged jokes: "Well at least you don't look like you've just come in from milking the cows any more" "Did I look like that?" "Just a bit. Nice clean cows". Although Eilis comes through as a character who is never really in control of her life, but rather dominated by circumstance, and although the end is painfully bittersweet, Brooklyn manages to be a story of hope, of things not turning out as expected and of people realizing that that can be ok.
Finally a coming-of-age story that is not overly dramatic. There are no spectacular turning points, no real bad guys, just the daily adventure of making decisions, taking care of each other and facing the unexpected as well as the old and tiresome.
The topic of immigration is dealt with the same way: through stroke after stroke of commonplace trials. It's significant that - having been provided easily with lodgings and workplace by father Flood -  the greatest hardship Eilis has to face is every foreigner's malady: home-sickness. The perspective is also unusual: not the American one, according to which moving to the States is quite simply the natural thing to do, but the painful one of someone who was quite satisfied with her life in the old country to begin with.
This is not only a novel for those who like coming-of-age fiction, historical novels and immigrants' narratives. It's a novel for anyone who can appreciate a moving story that ranges from melancholic to desperate to amusing, and the exquisite writing of a master of his craft.