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. Hornby and Ronan were both Oscar-nominated for Brooklyn and Hornby has said that working with Ronan had been an 'enormous pleasure'.Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. Nick Hornby revealed last December that he has a new script for the film's star, Saoirse Ronan, and he has advised 'the best young actress in the world' not to go 'rushing into anything' before she reads it. And what exile had done was to make her almost incapable of true feeling but I couldn’t name that, I could just show it.' The County Wexford-born writer said he had to make his character Eilís 'both determined in a certain way and innocent in another way, so that there were many things going on in her. In the novel, Eilís returns to a life she doesn’t feel to be hers, held to the horror of an unwanted marriage, writes Brockes, a recognisable situation, as the novelist concedes, for 'anyone who’s ever had a romance on holiday and thought what a dreadful mistake.'

And what were they meant to do, have an ending with her sitting on the train feeling smug: look what I’ve just done to everybody?' Tóibín was never concerned that the screenplay radically adjusted the ending. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.

We need your consent to load this YouTube content We use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. But I tear up for the very last section, that I didn’t write.' 'I’m interested in what Nick (Hornby) did with the structure of it,' Tóibín said. 'Which is so brilliant how much he left out, how he moved the drama on. The novel ends with her dilemma over two potential lovers, whereas in the movie there is resolution, and Eilís gets married in New York. In the course of an interview in New York with The Guardian,Tóibín recalled the 2015 film adaptation of Brooklyn which starred Saoirse Ronan as his protagonist, young Irish immigrant Eilís Lacey. Brooklyn author Colm Tóibín admits that he 'tears up' watching the final scene in the film adaptation of the book, which was devised as a departure from the novel's conclusion by screen-writer, Nick Hornby.

Brooklyn a novel by colm toibin