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Book review: Brooklyn
Fiction: Colm Toibin’s injects rare warmth into his novel about an Irishwoman forced to emigrate to New York
Tense loners, fraught encounters, stark scenarios and a high-ish death count" have tended to feature in Colm Tóibín's distinguished but "comfortless" novels, said Peter Kemp in the Sunday Times.
What makes his new book "so elating - as well as so brilliant", is that it comes with "a new dimension of warmth" and even the odd joke. It begins in the 1950s in Enniscorthy, a small town in southeast Ireland, "captured with atmospheric immediacy", and tells the story of a young woman, Eilis Lacey, who is forced to leave for New York in search of work. The novel "stands out as remarkable even among Ireland's distinguished roll of fiction about home and exile".
"Brooklyn is a tremendously moving and powerful work," said Benjamin Markovits in the New Statesman. Tóibín "rarely plays a wrong note" - though his modest, simple style means that some sacrifices are made in terms of vividness.
It takes great confidence to devote a novel "to the thoughts of an ordinary and even featureless central character", said Leo Robson in the Times. But Tóibín has the "patience, resourcefulness" and skill to pull it off.
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín, 256pp (Viking, £17.99). The Week Bookshop £16.19 (inc p&p) ·
