Blown by the wind

She got out of the car, steadying herself against the wind,

Colm Toibin, the last line in Brooklyn

In the classroom and in the workplace, Eilis Lacey shines with confidence and competence. Only in her personal life is she overcome with uncertainty and easily led by others. Many readers will identify with the central character in Colm Toibin's fine 2009 novel Brooklyn, the basis for an equally fine movie.

Jobs are scare in the Irish village where she lives in the 1950s. Her brothers have already gone to Liverpool to work. Eilis works only on Sundays in a small shop. Even so she loves her village and is surprised and disappointed when her mother and older sister conspire with an Irish priest in Brooklyn to find her a job in America.

She crosses the ocean alone and afraid. In Brooklyn the priest has found her a room in a boarding house for young working women and a job as a clerk in a department store. She begins attending college classes in accounting, then meets Tony, a young Italian plumber who falls instantly in love with her. Her own affections ignite more slowly, and meanwhile she feels manipulated by Tony, by her landlady, by the priest and by her employers. These are good people who think highly of her, yet still she feels unable to express her own feelings or her own wishes.

The death of her sister takes her home again, although not before Tony insists they marry secretly. He fears, correctly as it turns out, that Eilis might not want to return to Brooklyn. Back home her mother conspires again, this time to keep her home to fill the hole left by her sister. Her reluctance to admit she is married leads to complications with a young man.

Will Eilis finally act on her own for herself, or will she be continue to be led yet by circumstances and by the people in her life? Toibin keeps us guessing. His novel allows readers to know Eilis better that anyone else knows her, perhaps even better than she knows herself.