Later, as her mother washed the dishes and Eilis dried them, another knock came to the door. Rose picked up her golf clubs and was gone. ‘That’s a nice thing to say!’ her mother said.Īll three laughed as they heard a car stop outside the door and beep its horn. ‘She’ll tell you the story when she gets home,’ Rose replied. ‘That’s in case you want to go to the pictures,’ she said to Eilis. Opening it, she placed a one-shilling piece on the hallstand. Rose reached into her handbag and took out her purse. ‘Eilis and myself are going to have our tea now.’ ‘I’ll make a special tea for you later,’ her mother said. ‘I’m starving,’ Rose said, ‘but I’ve no time to eat.’ Their mother came from the kitchen to the hall. Eilis looked on silently as her sister moistened her lips and then checked herself one more time in the pocket mirror before putting it away. She was studying herself closely as she applied lipstick and eye make-up before glancing at her overall appearance in the large hall mirror, settling her hair. Rose, in the hall, was holding her pocket mirror in front of her face. Her golf clubs were in the hall in a few minutes, Eilis knew, someone would call for her and her sister would not return until the summer evening had faded.Įilis’s bookkeeping classes were almost ended now she had a manual on her lap about systems of accounting, and on the table behind her was a ledger where she had entered, as her homework, on the debit and credit sides, the daily business of a company whose details she had taken down in notes in the Vocational School the week before.Īs soon as she heard the front door open, Eilis went downstairs. Rose was wearing a cream-coloured cardigan over her shoulders. She watched Rose crossing the street from sunlight into shade, carrying the new leather handbag that she had bought in Clery’s in Dublin in the sale. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.Įilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.Īrriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce.

Brooklyn a novel by colm toibin