Patrick Tobin took part in the 1916 Rebellion in Enniscorthy and was subsequently interned in Frongoch in Wales. His grandfather, Patrick Tobin, was a member of the IRA, as was his grand-uncle Michael Tobin. He is the second youngest of five children. He was born in 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland. Toibin's parents were Bríd and Michael Toibin. In 2011, he was named one of Britain's Top 300 Intellectuals by The Observer, despite being Irish. He was hailed as a champion of minorities as he collected the 2011 Irish PEN Award. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. Education-B.A., University College, DublinĬolm Toibin is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Where-Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, UK.Listen to our Movies Meet Book Club Podcast as Hollister and O'Toole discuss the movie and book. See the 2015 film version with Saoirse Ronan, Oscar Best Actress.

Toibin is also the author of The Master (2004) and Mothers and Son, a collection of stories (2008). But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.īy far Toibin's most instantly engaging and emotionally resonant novel, Brooklyn will make readers fall in love with his gorgeous writing and spellbinding characters. He talks of having children who are Dodgers fans.

He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. Tony, a blond Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America - to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood 'just like Ireland' - she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.Įilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Colm Toibin's sixth novel, Brooklyn, is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself.Įilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Winner, Costa Novel of the Year Award, 2009

Brooklyn book colm toibin