Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

I have no idea why it took me so long to read this book. Colm is so much like my beloved Meave Binchy. This story is small in many ways and yet huge in others. I fell into the characters. I was on that ship, in the department store. It is the level of detail that Colm documents, the ordinariness of life... humour and sadness and unfairness and friends. One of my top reads this year, or any year for that matter.

From the back

A devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. Fall in love with Brooklyn ahead of its bestselling follow-up, Long Island.

It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. 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.

Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland.

There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.