Book Club Guide

Brooklyn

by Colm Toibin · 2009 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The emigrant who becomes someone else — and the price of return
Eilis as a character defined by her inability to choose
Ireland and America as two claims on a single self

About this book

Eilis Lacey leaves Enniscorthy in County Wexford in the early 1950s for Brooklyn, where she builds a life, falls in love and becomes someone new — until a death brings her back to Ireland, and she has to choose between the life she has made and the life she left. Tóibín's novel is about emigration, identity and the terrible cost of not fully belonging anywhere.

Published in 2009, Brooklyn was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Costa Novel Award. It was adapted into a film in 2015. Tóibín has described Eilis as inspired by his own mother's account of emigrating from Wexford.

Discussion questions

Eilis never quite chooses — she drifts, she is acted upon, she finds herself in situations she didn't engineer. How does Tóibín develop this passivity — and what does it say about the emigrant experience?
The novel is set in the 1950s but reads as timeless. What does the period setting add — and how does it shape what choices are available to Eilis?
The relationship between Eilis and Tony in Brooklyn is tender and credible. How does Tóibín develop love as something that happens to Eilis — and what does the subsequent return to Ireland cost it?
The climax involves a secret Eilis has kept. How does Tóibín develop the consequences — and does Eilis's choice feel right?
Brooklyn is a novel almost entirely without drama — everything happens quietly and at the level of feeling. What does this understatement achieve — and what would a more eventful version lose?