NEGATIVE REVIEW ON COLM TÓIBÍN' S NOVEL : "BROOKLYN"

Brooklyn, the novel written by Colm Tóibín, tells the story of a young Irish woman, Eilis Lacey. She has to move from her hometown to America to work for economic reasons during the 1950s. She has to be able to stay, for a long term, far from her family and this will cause her a lot of pain. As soon as she makes new friends like Tony, an Italian young man; the fate want her to turn back to Ireland. At this point the protagonist has to make a choice: stay in Ireland or return to her work in Brooklyn.

In the first part of the novel it is easy for the reader to wear the shoes of the protagonist and to imagine the feelings she has been proving during her journey and the first years in America.
On the other side I don not share the idea of the writer to bring Eilis back to Ireland. Continuing with the reading, I found the way of writing of the novelist very cold and impersonal and also the main character appears sometimes far from the reader.
I appreciated the themes chosen by the writer: the immigration, the abandonment offer own land and her family, the homesickness and the loneliness.

In my opinion this story could have been better if there was more empathy and a better of the character by Tóibín.