Title
The title is simple. The reader knows what to expect, the new and unfamiliar world of Brooklyn, so from the early scenes set in Co. Wexford there is a sense of expectation and curiosity about the far off place. I was thinking about 'Anita and Me' by Meera Syall, not a book I'm crazy about but one which flags up the main content in its title. Anita doesn't really appear for the first hundred pages of a three hundred page novel (could be cut by at least fifty!) but we know to expect her because of the title.
Plot
Eilis emigrates to Brooklyn at the suggestion of her sister Rose and the parish priest who has contacts in the city. Jobs for young women are scarce and, though Eilis is not completely convinced about going she agrees anyway. Her life there is unremarkable, working in a department store, living in digs, going to dances, meeting young men but each event progresses logically from one to the other.
Structure
It doesn't have separate chapters but is written in four sections. I see part three as containing both the third and fourth act, as it were, in other words the rising and falling action of the story. It's written in the third person close-up to the POV of Elis Lacey and traces her emigration to Brooklyn and life there.
Style
Toibin is not a stylist in the obvious sense and reminds me of John McGahern in that he uses simple language and avoids abstract or intellectual words at all costs, I suppose also because his POV character wouldn't use them. Toibin doesn't have Eilis describe Brooklyn in much detail to bein with, maybe because, rather than being full of wonder about the place, she is emotionally flattened by the experience of finding herself there. As a result the pace of the earlier part of the novel is quite slow. But as Eilis matures as a woman she notices more and the prose becomes more lively and visual.
Toibin creates tension skilfully throughout, withholding information, a good example being when we come to the big turning point in the story, about two thirds of the way through: he creates a real sense of anticipation and what happens comes as a complete surprise, though it is quite an ordinary, if tragic event. From this point onwards the events of the plot move to an inevitable conclusion and the reader is pulled faster and faster towards the denouement.
Characterisation - Eilis
I thought the way Toibin wrote about Eilis's developing relationships with the two men in the story was very well done, the pacing of the writing making her actions totally understandable. The minor characters are all well drawn and have their own believable trajectories.
I loved the book and came away full of admiration for Colm Toibin's achievement. I'd read The Heather Blazing when it was out but it didn't leave me blazing. This did.
