A young lady moves to America from Ireland, and into her own life as a woman. 
 So many novels and stories based in the NY Metro area move to the frenetic guitar riff of what in my mind will always be the city in the center of the universe. As a pleasant surprise, I find "Brooklyn" moves in the gentler rhythms of a steady baseline that the tourists and glam-merchants don't seem to notice, the relaxing lullaby of the outer boroughs. Toibin's setting is the one I know best, of life and love in the calmer village-within-a-city atmospheres that keep every neighborhood separate and distinct. 
 The plot revolves around Eilis, and her transformation from being a passenger in her own life, to the point where she takes the reins of fate in hand. Despite the fact that the central character is passive through most of the novel, I was far from bored. Characters and events swirl thickly around her, and you almost cant help but be sympathetic to her paralysis, or to her confusion at finding home no longer fits as well as it used to. The contrast between the nebulous prospects of "what might be" and the lure of the familiar is so subtle that you find yourself pondering the choice yourself. The safety of home, or the chance to at least try for that "better life" that may no longer be waiting on the other side of the ocean.