This award winning novel is set in both Ireland and Brooklyn, in the 1950's. The novel opens as as the main character, Eilis Lacey, younger sister of Rose, lives with her Mom in a small town in Ireland, barely scratching out a living. Eilis is an innocent, easily influenced, mostly unconscious, happy enough with her life, assuming she will eventually meet a boy, marry, have children and spend her life in the small Irish town of Enniscorthy. We get an accurate description of post war life in Ireland, her friends, and Eilis's small, closed world. Her older sister, Rose, has different ideas, other plans for her and with the help of an Irish Priest, visiting from Brooklyn, arranges a passage for Rose to Brooklyn, including a job. Thus, Eilis's life changes dramatically through no fault of her own. She is definitely not the master of her fate as she just goes along with Rose's wishes.
The second part of the book takes us to life in Brooklyn, her difficult adjustment to the immigrant experience, and being away from her family, a life quite different from that at home. At first homesick and depressed, she, with her Priest's help, goes to school, works toward a degree in accounting and gradually makes friends and assimilates into the American experience. She soon becomes accustomed to her job, is promoted, promised another promotion once she gets her degree. And, most importantly, she has a beau named Tony, her first experience with love. He woos her, and they seem to fall in love. She meets his family and wins them over despite their being Italian and she Irish. Things seem to be going well until Eilis's mother writes to tell her that Rose, her older sister, had died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Thus, she must go back to help her mother but vows to Tony that she will be back in a month.
The third and final section describes her return, how she falls effortlessly back into her old life, her mother's plan all along. And with the urging of her old girl friends, she takes up with a neighborhood boy even though she has discovered that she is pregnant from Tony. She seems to once again be falling in love, thinks hard about what she should do, whether to stay or go. Towards the end, one of her mother's gossipy neighbors invites her into her home and alludes to Eilis's last minute marriage to Tony back in Brooklyn before leaving for Ireland. This shocks Eilis out of her day dreams and changes everything and without saying good by to anyone other than her Mother, who seems to know the truth, she returns to Brooklyn and the novel ends, abruptly I thought.
I like the book but did not love it, maybe because I knew the story from the movie previews.
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