Brooklyn

1950s. Young Eilis lives in an Irish town where life is boring, predictable—and yet incredibly cozy. Eilis doesn’t feel like running away anywhere; she’s content with her familiar life, happy with her family in their beloved old home. But one day a chance comes along that could change her life—leaving for a completely different world, to a faraway and almost mythical country from which nobody returns, and where only bits of news about the amazing lives of those who went abroad reach you. Eilis doesn’t want to leave her mother, her sister, her home—but they don’t turn down such an opportunity. There awaits her a good job; housing has already been arranged… And a girl from the remote Irish backwoods ends up in never-sleeping New York’s Brooklyn, with its luxurious department stores, wide streets, and gleaming cars. Eilis misses home, mourns loneliness, but time goes on, and gradually she gets used to Brooklyn, becomes part of it—until she’s already “her own” in America, already catching hold of her bird of happiness. Until an event happens that forces her to return to Ireland…

Remarkably subtle, full of spellbinding light and a melancholy that is sometimes sorrowful, sometimes joyful—the novel about life at the intersection of two worlds and two eras. A novel of choice and self-discovery, of doubts and overcoming them, of longing for the past and anticipation of the future. A meditative portrayal of the life of an ordinary Irish girl who moved to America—her yearning, her sadness, and the way relationships grow around her. It’s a quiet melodrama about the idea that life isn’t an explosive kaleidoscope, but a routine sequence of small tragedies with flashes of happiness lasting only seconds.