Brooklyn Story

In 1952, Eilis Lacey is a young woman from a small town in Ireland. She works weekends at a shop run by spiteful Mrs Kelly. Eilis's older sister Rose has arranged for her to go to the USA to find a better future. She departs but has an awful crossing, as she is given food poisoning by the ship's food and locked out of the toilet by her cabin neighbours. The woman in the bunk below her, an experienced traveller, is eventually her saviour. She gives her advice and support for entering the country and beginning life in Brooklyn, where many Irish immigrants live.

Eilis is given accommodation at an Irish boarding house where she dines each night with the traditionalist landlady and her fellow female residents. She also has a job at a department store but struggles with small talk and customer service. Her letters to Rose, back in Ireland, chronicle her severe homesickness. She is visited by Father Flood, a priest she knows from home, and he tries to help by enlisting her in bookkeeping classes. At a dance she meets Tony, from an Italian family, who is quickly besotted with her and becomes her boyfriend. With these developments Eilis begins to feel more comfortable in New York, although she is slow to return Tony's declaration of love.

Father Flood informs Eilis that Rose has died of an undisclosed illness. After a trans-Atlantic phone call with her mother reveals that she is struggling to cope, Eilis decides to return home for a visit. Tony insists that if she is leaving they must get secretly married first. Back in Ireland, everybody seems to be conspiring to keep Eilis. Her best friend is getting married a week after her booked return journey, and her mother has already accepted the invitation on her behalf. She is set up on dates with eligible bachelor Jim, who is about to inherit property, and she replaces her sister in an urgently needed bookkeeping role. Eilis starts to feel that she now has the future in Ireland that did not exist when she left, and stops opening letters from Tony.

Mrs Kelly, her former employer, meets with Eilis and says she has worked out (through gossip) that she is already married. Eilis realises Mrs Kelly will tell everyone and is reminded of the small town mentality. She informs her mother of the marriage and says she is returning to the States. Eilis sets off for Brooklyn and Tony the next day. On the crossing, she becomes the experienced traveller offering words of wisdom to a first-time émigré.

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