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The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
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By Lynn · 1 post · 43 views
last updated Jun 20, 2025 08:37AM
In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart Spoilers/Discussion
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By Barbara · 13 posts · 17 views
last updated Sep 19, 2025 11:35AM
What Members Thought
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Sometimes the right book finds you at just the right time. Brooklyn has been sitting on my shelf for years, waiting patiently to be read. It's a simple story about an Irish girl in the 1950s who reluctantly immigrates to America, builds a new life, and then finds herself being drawn back home after a tragedy. Eilis' life is dramatically different from mine, but at this time when I am also dealing with having to build a new life and confront tragedy at home, Toibin's words touched my very soul -
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Liked this a lot, partly because it helped me imagine what it must have been like for my great-great grandparents coming over from Ireland.
This book grew on me after I finished it. I'm a Colm Toibin fan and this writing seemed so plain, so restrained. I finally decided that the writing mirrors the main character's internal life. The settings--a town in Ireland and Brooklyn, N.Y. are simply and touchingly evoked. I just expected something very different and was initially disappointed. Glad I stayed with it. It feels true to the fifties and the Catholic world in which the main character has grown up.
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I plan to read this with Constant Reader in August 2010.
Apr 27, 2010
Curious Squid
rated it
liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
one-book-one-chicago
May 14, 2010
Sheila
marked it as to-be-checked-out
Aug 19, 2010
Andrea
added it
Jun 21, 2017
Debra
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
audiobooks,
historical-fiction
