Brooklyn in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Feb 20, 2016 Melissa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book came highly recommended and I also wanted to check it out before I see the movie. Having said that, I can see why people enjoyed it. The writing is beautiful and brings the characters and scenery to life. I felt like I was in Brooklyn in the 1950s while reading it. I also liked the simplicity of life back then and it made me think of all I take for granted. (If I want to connect with someone, I can send them an e-mail. Back in the '50s, they had to write letters by post and it took day ...more

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Dec 04, 2016 Sarah rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, euro-fiction, american-fiction, ireland, nyc

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. How on earth was this book shortlisted for the Booker Prize?

I suppose there may be some good parts to it. The immigration theme running throughout is timely and anyway, it's always interesting to talk about the Irish who came to the US. I also did want to know what Eilis decided, so I did keep reading.

That's about it.

This book is basically a romance, which is really weird to me, because it's been described in rather feminist terms by a lot of reviewers, and I don't really know that a story ab How on earth was this book shortlisted for the Booker Prize?

I suppose there may be some good parts to it. The immigration theme running throughout is timely and anyway, it's always interesting to talk about the Irish who came to the US. I also did want to know what Eilis decided, so I did keep reading.

That's about it.

This book is basically a romance, which is really weird to me, because it's been described in rather feminist terms by a lot of reviewers, and I don't really know that a story about a woman trying to decide between two men is so new and feminist. You can argue that she's actually trying to choose between Ireland and the US, safety and independence, and while that's technically true, the book is written so that you feel the most difficult part of the choice is really just between Tony and Jim. It was in no way emotionally-compelling to follow her inner thoughts about making these choices, either. I didn't identify with the difficulty of that choice, which is how I knew it was really bad, since I have ACTUALLY had to make that choice between countries in my own life. And though the book attempts to delve into Eilis' inner world, it still reads almost like a Hemingway novel, with a straight set of plot events, and we are never really drawn into empathy with Eilis, or anyone else, for that matter. I actually found myself identifying most with Tony, which would be fine, except for that it's so explicitly not the author's intent, and except for that "most" doesn't mean I really connected with him, either.

But it's really the sexual content in the book that's the worst, starting with the plot line about Miss Fortini and Eilis. Basically, one night, Eilis is sexually assaulted by her female supervisor at the department store, and instead of having Eilis react in any believable way, Toibin has apparently written it into the storyline just as a gag that he repeatedly, jokingly references. Thinking of it later, "The thought had come into her [Eilis'] mind of telling him [Tony] who the last person to touch her bottom was. The idea of his reaction to this made her laugh so much that she did a vigorous backstroke, letting him presume, she hoped, that he was being too free under the water with his hands." Everything about this part of the story and the way it's handled enraged me.

Then there's a sex scene between Eilis and Tony, in which a) it's made clear that Eilis has never had sex, but of course we get no parallel information about Tony at all, because, you know, women's (but only women's) first sexual experiences are something that we must always write about, especially if we're male writers; b) Eilis finds sex very painful (thanks for writing that, again, because you know, we should always equate sex with pain for women) and yet cannot tell Tony it's painful until after it's over; and c) Even worse than b), Eilis discovers that she can "no longer control" Tony when they have sex, and that he is "unaware that she was with him" during sex. And this feeling makes her "want him more than she had ever done, made her feel that this now and the memory of it later would be enough for her and had made a difference to her beyond anything she had ever imagined." What.the.everloving.f*#%. ...more

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