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What Members Thought
This is a deceptively slight novel, but every word and incident is carefully chosen, and I am sure it would repay rereading, as with other Tóibín books. Small everyday details gradually build to an unbearable emotional intensity.
Eilis, a young woman living in a small Irish community with limited opportunities in the 1950s, reluctantly agrees to emigrate to the US when her sister and the local priest find a job there for her. She has difficulty settling in to her job at a department store and he ...more
Eilis, a young woman living in a small Irish community with limited opportunities in the 1950s, reluctantly agrees to emigrate to the US when her sister and the local priest find a job there for her. She has difficulty settling in to her job at a department store and he ...more
I really enjoyed listening to this book on audio. It's a quiet book about a young Irish woman who emigrates to Brooklyn, NY post -WWII. I thought that the Toibin did a great job depicting the immigrant experience for young women in the US during that timeframe. However, the story started to lose its luster for me once the focus turned to Eilis' love life. The book started to go downhill for me at that point, which is why I ended up giving this book 4 instead of 5 stars. Even so, I would recommen
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I loved this book until the last 10%. Eilis grew up in Ireland, but her sister and priest arranged for her to be able to immigrate to the United States. She is kind and timid, but with the help of the priest gets a decent job in a shop and enrolls in night classes to become a book keeper. She doesn’t relate well with her roommates and doesn’t develop any close friends until she meets Tony. He is a genuine and kind young man of Italian decent who grew up in Brooklyn. She isn’t sure how deeply she
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Probably more like a 3.5. I really enjoyed the main character, the story of her immigration to the states, description of post-war Brooklyn. And, I consistently struggle with women characters written by men.
It probably deserves 4 stars, but it turned into a scmalzy romance novel about 2/3 of the way in, and it never turned back, so I'm giving it 3.
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Liked it, though I think I liked the movie even better. Listened to on my iPhone; borrowed from the library.
Slow paced but a book you want to keep on reading. An ending that keeps you guessing and makes you wonder what you would do in the character's place.
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A sweet/ bittersweet book I would recommend to anyone who has ever lived far from "home". Glad I read the book before I saw the movie - I'll wait for the DVD.
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Feb 03, 2014
Ginger
marked it as to-read
Nov 23, 2014
Kat (A Journey In Reading)
marked it as to-read
Mar 11, 2015
O'Rissa
rated it
liked it
Shelves:
fiction,
racial-ethnic-cultural,
geographic-regional,
march,
book-club,
literature,
2015,
bonus-books-15
May 31, 2021
Anna
marked it as to-read
May 08, 2024
Kathy Jo
marked it as to-read
May 16, 2024
Shannon Wallner
marked it as to-read
Jul 09, 2024
Kristen
marked it as to-read
