“She never said ‘America’ or ‘New York.’ she always said ‘Brooklyn’ like it was a country all by itself”
An Interview with Colm Toibin, Author of ‘Brooklyn’
To read a book by Colm Toibin — any book, and he’s written many — is to lose all sense of time and responsibility. Doctor appointments, grocery shopping, doing the dishes, picking up the kids — all can wait. (Well, perhaps not the kids.) Toibin is a wizard; his stories are spellbinding. Filled with heartbreak and hope, loss and recovery, exile and return, his themes are epic and timeless in scope, heartbreaking and bittersweet in detail. When reading Toibin, you feel as if he’s written only for you. Everything feels right, nothing is out of place. He is a storyteller of prodigious gifts.
In no book are these gifts on more abundant display than in “Brooklyn,” Toibin’s 2009 novel about a young Irish woman immigrating to 1950s Brooklyn. (Simon & Schuster has just published a new paperback edition timed to coincide with the Nov. 4 release of the Fox Searchlight film, starring a radiant and unforgettable Saoirse Ronan.)
The Brooklyn Eagle spoke recently by telephone with Toibin: