About this title: From the award-winning author of "The Master" comes a moving historical novel set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, concerning a young woman torn between her family and her past in Ireland and the American who wins her heart.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Scribner
Date Published: 2009-05-05
ISBN-13:9781439138311ISBN:1439138311
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781439138311. read more
Binding: Spoken Word Compact Disc
Publisher: Blackstone Audio Inc
Date Published: 2009-05-05
ISBN-13:9781433291906ISBN:1433291908
Description: NEW. Spoken Word Compact Disc. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781433291906. read more
Binding: Spoken Word MP3-CD
Publisher: Blackstone Audio Inc
Date Published: 2009-05-05
ISBN-13:9781433291913ISBN:1433291916
Description: NEW. Spoken Word MP3-CD. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781433291913. read more
Binding: Audio CD
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781433291906ISBN:1433291908
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: MP3 CD
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781433291913ISBN:1433291916
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: First edition. advanced reader's edition
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781439138311ISBN:1439138311
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. rare in trade paperback by scribner's read more
Description: Like New. 2009 hardcover with dj, 1ST EDITION, 1ST PRINTING WITH FULL NUMBER LINE, no marks noted in or on book, All of our products are cleaned with an disinfectant for your protection before shipping. read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS LTD Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780670918126ISBN:0670918121
Description: BRAND NEW HARDBACK. 256 pages. A novel of great love and loss, and of the heartbreaking choice between personal freedom and duty. (Hardback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Center Point Pub
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781602855304ISBN:1602855307
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Spoken Word Compact Disc
Publisher: Blackstone Audio Inc
Date Published: 2009-05-05
ISBN-13:9781433291883ISBN:1433291886
Description: NEW. Spoken Word Compact Disc. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781433291883. read more
Binding: Audio CD
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781433291883ISBN:1433291886
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"I was struggling with how to define this book, even to myself, until about three-fourths of the way through. Gentle, was what I decided. It's a gentle little book.
The prose swept me away for awhile and I did like the voice. Eilis was appealing, and I especially liked the way she made a practice of pondering her day, needing to go through everything that happened before falling asleep. She's a thoughtfull character and I got a real sense of who she was.
But for all its elegance, the first half of the book read like a fairy-tale. Eilis doesn't face any problems because they get solved before she can even recognize them as such. She has her passage paid for her on a ship to America. A good-hearted priest helps find her a job and gets her a place to live. Her tuition is automatically paid in full before she even has a chance to long for an education. And if she dared to feel a little homesick, there was the priest again, and Mrs. Keough, and her employer at the shop to coddle her and worry over her. When it got to the part where she met Tony after only attending two dances -- good-looking, pure-intentioned Tony, who naturally wants to marry her right off the bat -- I was somewhat baffled.
Rose's plight was a welcome momentum shift. The parts with Eilis back in Ireland felt real and that sense of responsiblility heavy, but in the end, there was still no confrontation, no declaration of feelings on Eilis's part. I got the sense she could've stayed or gone back to Brooklyn, and it wouldn't have mattered to her. Did she love Tony or was the Jim guy the one? It seemed she went along with whoever she was with at the moment. In the end, her mom just pretty much ends any chance of Eilis making a stand by telling her what she should do. And Eilis does it."
"The first three-quarters of the book is like a fairy tale as Eilis, our young narrator, leaves her native Ireland, where the future is bleak but ties are strong, for Brooklyn, where the future is bright and the people alien. It seems challenging for writers to render characters like Eilis, with her basic desire to do right by people and her goody-two-shoes-edness (we all know people like this, but they rarely come across as three-dimensional in literature), but Toibin carries it off beautifully. The entire book is tenderly and quietly wrought; it cast a subtle but powerful spell, and I read the book in one sitting. The romance aspects to the novel are quite touching. Even though my ancestors came over from Ireland way earlier than the 1950s, I kept thinking, I hope it was like this for them.
Without giving anything away, the last quarter of the novel is more emotionally complex; this is, after all, a coming-of-age tale: secrets are revealed (here's to the self-righteous busybodies in life who are always forcing our hands!), and characters must face the consequences of their decisions, weigh allegiances, make sacrifices, hurt others and live with the knowledge of it, and pick one road over another, knowing that the road not taken will likely haunt them for the rest of their lives.
"In Brooklyn, Colm Toibin explores the immigrant experience through a shy, but ambitious Irish girl. Elisie is sent to America by her mother and older sister in hopes that she will find the bright future that eludes her in her small Irish town. At first, Eilise just wants to stay close to her family but as she begins to have new, exciting experiences she relishes her new freedom. When she is unexpectedly called home she has to choose between her new life and her old one.
This book is so much more then the plot suggests. Though the surprise ending keeps you interested, it is the beautiful, lyrical language that will have you savoring each line. Toibin brings to life the the sea voyage in third class cabins, the parish dances, and the stuffy boarding house. The audio version is beautifully read by Kirsten Potter. She does a great job of evoking the homesickness and loneliness of a young girl on her own for the first time."
"Eilis Lacey lets things happen to her. Living with her mother and sister in Ireland in the early 1950s, she takes a job she knows she's going to hate because someone offers it to her. When a priest offers to sponsor her and find her a job in Brooklyn, she leaves her home and travels to America, where she lives where he tells her to live, takes the job he finds for her, and enrolls in the night-classes he thinks will be suitable. She goes to a dance because her landlady asked her to, and meets a boy who pursues her. She follows along, unsure of exactly how she feels. There's a great scene in the novel when she mentions to her boss that Tony, her boyfriend, is planning to take her on a trip to Coney Island. The boss starts acting-- brings in a whole bunch of swimsuits for Eilis to try on, getting her a razor so she won't have any unsightly hair on the beach, and encouraging her to lose weight. As the boss tugs and pulls each swimsuit and gives her frank assessment, Eilis seems almost detached from the experience-- she can't even decide which suit she likes best.
Then Eilis's sister Rose, the glue who holds the family together, dies suddenly, and Eilis finds herself on her way back to Ireland, where she continues (maddeningly) to let other people tell her what to do. Until she doesn't.
Eilis is a memorable, fully-formed, and altogether frustrating character. And the slow pace and not-too-exciting love story are worth taking in, just because the end is so good. We finally get to see Eilis grow and make a choice for herself. What will that choice be?"
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