Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

If you want to read a romance story which tells problems similar of nowadays’ , “Brooklyn” by Colm Tóibín is the perfect choice. The writer convoys the reader into the novel thanks to Eilis, the protagonist. She is a young girl who lives in Ireland -Tóibín’s country­-  and she is characterised as the typically good girl who ever does everything others order to her.  Also the idea to leave the country is not hers but of her sister’, Rose the ex machina of the novel.

The story highlighted some important aspects. Brooklyn is both a “coming of age” and an immigration story. It talks about Eilis’s new life, she is adult and has to learn to live by herself, to understand what working means and how improve her ability to interact with others. But at the other hand it is also about immigration, from Ireland she goes to America, a new country full of new opportunities, new people and different cultures. At the beginning she starts to familiarize herself in the new place and then, after a bit, she conforms to. Her situation reminds us any population that nowadays tries to arrive in Europe.

At the end the reader would continue to read, thanks to Tóibín’s ability to convoy him/her with the simple and involve language proper of a best seller like Brooklyn.