I honestly can’t remember why I picked Brooklyn up off the shelf. I was home with my family for the holidays, reeling in the emotional confusion of being in a relationship that, at that particular time, wasn’t serving me and not knowing what to do about it or how to fix it. I was also under immense (self-imposed) pressure to meet some giant grad-school and post-grad school deadlines. I was stressed to an unreal level, trying to stay calm, and trying to get my mind off of everything. So when I saw it there on the shelf, its greenish cover immediately calling to my mind a few fond memories of living in Brooklyn myself, I heard my mom’s voice in my head: “Have you read Brooklyn? UGH. You’d love it.”
Ok. Looks like I could finish it in a week, maybe, before I fly back to school. Why not?
I didn’t.
A week and a half, one breakup, and two flights later I was still reading Brooklyn in my bed in London. Tony was walking Eilis home from the dance where they’d met for the first time when I realized, Oh, wait. I’ve read this before. This was on page 136.
Nothing makes you feel dumber than not remembering a book you’ve already read. Especially a good one! I mean, it’s no A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it’s a memorable story.
I thought momentarily about abandoning it seeing as I know how it ends, but then I thought, No. There’s a reason I picked this up. There’s a reason this story is in my life right now, I just can’t see it yet.
I kept reading and as I watched Eilis and Tony fall ungracefully into love, I cried. I cried big, fat, wet, tears for all the things they had that I didn’t; for how sure he was about her and how far he’d go out of his way just to be there to walk her home from work. I cried for all the time and togetherness and space they had to work through their relationship and their feelings. I cried for all the things they gave themselves that I didn’t allow in, in my own relationships.
Simultaneously, I was nostalgic for a time when you would only see someone on Saturdays and Thursdays after work and every other day, you had your own life and letters to write to your family in Ireland and you couldn’t be texting constantly. You were just present with whatever it was you were doing at any given moment. I felt like I needed that; that singularity of attention.
Then I cried for Rose. My own sister and I have become close in new ways as she’s grown up. She’s 13 years younger than me but for the first time, I feel like I can talk to her like an adult; like any of my closest friends. I have always felt the type of love one feels for their baby sister, but I’m just beginning to understand how that love evolves when your sister is someone you admire and can confide in. Knowing, also, that she’s developing that kind of love for me too, I felt I could imagine the pain of Rose’s death from both sides. I cried for Eilis’s loss of her confidant, her rock, her role model, and I cried for Rose’s passing without being able to say goodbye to her baby sister, hug her one last time, say “I love you.” I’m so incredibly grateful that this a pain I don’t really know, but those empathetic tears helped me to see more clearly my love for my own sister.
It’s worth noting here that this story did not have this kind of impact on me the first time I read it. And I think that’s very much the point. The words on the page don’t change but the person I was/am/will be while reading them is constantly in flux. I clearly wasn’t ready to receive these messages the first time around.
When Eilis goes back to Ireland and falls right into the arms of Jim Farrell, I thought, WTF? I don’t remember this chick being such a cold-hearted floozy! But then I tried to step back, sympathize with my fellow woman, and see it from the perspective of time and space and how much farther apart everything was in the world. I started to see what perceived distance (physical or emotional) really can do to love.
I do believe there are some loves that transcend all things on this earthly plane. There are loves “that even time will lie down and be still for.”* But Eilis’ love for Tony wasn’t that. It was methodical and thought-out and unsure and it was made strong by effort, not by Devine Intervention or whatever you want to call it. And so, with space and lack of maintenance, it faded. Meanwhile, there was Jim Farrell! Front and center, in full technicolor, offering a life she could see herself being happy in.
I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Eilis’ choices in the end, or what Colm Tóibín may have wanted me to take away from the whole thing. But I do know that the tears I cried into Brooklyn‘s pages helped me to move and process a lot of stuck, fragmented, raw emotion. In lamenting for the things I thought I was missing, I could choose to, instead, move forward in my life with those things. This story helped me consider the complexities of love in new ways – romantic love as well as familial love – and the things that can strengthen or derail it. It also allowed me to heal many things that needed to be healed and, for that, I am truly grateful.
Books & References:
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (2009)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943)
* “I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.” This is a quote from the 1998 movie, “Practical Magic” written by Akiva Goldsman, Robin Swicord, and Adam Brooks, and directed by Griffin Dunne.
Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Thank you for supporting my reading habit!