Book at Bedtime - Brooklyn - An Unlooked-for Offer

Niamh Cusack reads Colm Toibin's story of duty, love and a girl who moved from the south of Ireland to seek a new life in New York in the 1950s. The novel opens in the small town of Enniscorthy in the south east of Ireland in the early 1950s. Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who can find no work. Her three brothers have already left to seek their fortunes in England; she, her sister Rose and her widowed mother are all that remain at home. When a priest comes home from America for a holiday, he recognises both Eilis' plight and her potential.