Brooklyn - by Colm Tóibín

I'm a sucker for character driven novels. I discovered this book by accident while randomly pulling books off the shelf in the library and looking at their covers to see if they looked interesting. Toibin is an Irish author, and in this story the main character is an Irish young woman who sails across the ocean to Brooklyn because she can't find work in Ireland.

The story follows her from Ireland to Brooklyn and is narrated, albeit in the third person, in her voice. It tells of her experiences in the strange world of America and about how she copes with her distance from her family, and how she falls in love with an Italian boy. I think what I loved so much about this story is that the reader grows and changes with the girl (I keep calling her that because I can't remember her name!) as she experiences new things. The writing style is not fussy or overdone; the prose is elegant and interesting and doesn't interfere with the story.

Although this work is fiction, long after I've finished this book I find myself wondering what happened to her, and what her life was like after the story ended. The book covers only about a year and a half of her life. Definitely worth reading if you like in depth character studies.