Brooklyn

Colm Tóibín has a wonderful way of writing very simply and beautifully, characters that are constructed so daintily but sharply like the tips of sharpened pencils or the first time you saw a pixel perfect photograph. That might sound pretentious but it is this clarity of character and of writing that makes his novels so absorbing and realistic.

Brooklyn is a novel about a young woman, Eilis Lacey, who moves from Ireland to New York in the 1950s. Initially homesick, Eilis settles in New York without realising, and then unexpectedly has to return to Ireland finding that she has almost outgrown her old home town. So far, so coming of age.

Part of my love of this novel was a bit of an obsession I have at the moment for the simple life, which Brooklyn, being set in the fifties, has in abundance. But personal whims aside, it is a beautiful story.