Did you watch Brooklyn? (Spoiler)

[Bejazzled]

What a beautiful film

Although I did feel sorry for the spurned chap at the end.

I really liked the book, and agree that it was darker than the film. Thought I know lots of people didn't like the book! The ending was much more ambiguous than in the film. Both me and my mam thought she really wanted to stay in Ireland, my Dad thought she obviously really wanted to go back to America because it was much more exciting.

I sort of wondered whether they changed the ending to make it a bit more uplifting with an American audience in mind.

I thought the part where her mother went up the bed at the end was heartwrenching.. she just couldn't bear to say goodbye. Especially after the potential excitement of her staying and marrying lovely Domhnall.

I have now read the book after seeing the film on Sunday. It's so different! However I still really feel she made the right choice to go back to Tony. She loved him. That's so clear in the book. She had her head turned by Jim, but he just really represented the kind of life she had thought she wanted in Ireland. The best tables in restaurants. Being talked about. That excitement would have faded after a while. Tony was the man she loved.

Absolutely love this film. I went to see it in the cinema when it first came out. I had read the book but had forgotten it by the time I saw the film. I was very glad she went back to Tony it was homesickness keeping her home and the ease of slotting back in. Small town life in Ireland in that period would have definitely held her back. Heartbroken for her mother though. Saoirse Ronan was amazing in it she held the whole film. I hadn't seen her in anything before that (or since) but it did show what an outstanding actress she is and her Oscar nominations are well deserved. She was only 21 when they filmed Brooklyn

I don't think that Eilis's mother would ever have moved to the US, and I don't think that, if she went to visit, her liking Tony and his family would be at all a foregone conclusion. She is someone utterly schooled in the snobberies and social gradations of smalltown Irish life of the 1950s, and, however kindhearted, would have seen Tony, at least initially, as a disappointingly blue-collar foreigner from a poor non-English speaking family who eat 'funny food' -- and, of course, the one who 'forced' her daughter into throwing away all the opportunities that could have been hers at home. Plus she would have been utterly hurt and humiliated by the revelation of Eilis's secret marriage, and the flood of malicious gossip it would have caused after Eilis left again so suddenly. I think it would have taken her a lot of time to effort to 'forgive' Tony for that.

I also think Eilis would not have invited her to come and visit until she and Tony were in a much more obviously prosperous situation. Otherwise the comparison with the life she could have had in Ireland with Jim and an assured position in the social and economic life of their town would be too obvious and painful to her mother, and their would have been a lot of 'accidental' comments about how lovely Jim's wife is, how well-respected Jim is, and how rich they are etc.

Her mother isn't an entirely benign character either. Colm Toibin is very good on open-ended gestures from mother-figures that are capable of several interpretations, but are difficult to call someone on. Mrs Lacey doesn't accept the wedding invitation for a week after Eilis should have returned to the US by accident, or just out of an understandable desire to have her daughter with her for longer -- she doesn't say 'Please stay on another week, so we can go together'. She accepts on Eilis's behalf and pressures her subtly into staying longer than planned, and, by never asking anything about her life in Brooklyn, refuses to acknowledge Eilis has changed, or has a life elsewhere.

And going upstairs to bed just after Eilis has confessed that she's married, and refusing to have the frank conversation that E wants, or spend a last few hours together, or to say goodbye to her in the morning, is also a powerfully passive-aggressive way of punishing her daughter.

I was thinking about that re mother visiting the US, wondering whether the cost would have been too much and out of the question.

Diplomatic, I don't disagree about the mother's behaviour being passive-aggressive and ambiguous. I do, though, think she was acting out of hurt/fear of losing Eilis after having already lost her husband and Rose.

Her actions are somewhat condemnable but the impulse behind them is pathetic (in the proper sense), IMO.

She never even asked Eilis what her husband's name was.

She never even asked Eilis what her husband's name was. She didn't did she. I liked the fact she asked if he was nice, then said he'd have to be for you to like him. She did love and want the best for her daughter but couldn't quite be totally selfless.

Was there an explanation in the book as to why the mother only had two children? Was she widowed young?

She had two sons who lived in England but they didn't appear in the adaptation.

It's so interesting reading people's views, especially about the book. I thought Eilis was a very dull person, and I didn't get the impression that she loved Tony or even fancied him, the one shag they had was crap. She went to the US because it was arranged for her, same as the job and night classes. She became Tony's girlfriend and later wife because he asked her, she never seemed to have any real feelings or ideas of her own, as I read her anyway. When she came back to Ireland she was living Rose's life, she got her job, moved in her circles, played at her golf club etc. Rose was so much more interesting as a person imo. Perhaps the book is too subtle for me, but I almost felt that Eilis herself was a plot device in order for us to see other, more interesting characters through her eyes, iykwim. Other readers seem to love her though so thats just my two cents.

I think she was a young girl who didn't know her own mind and who found herself in bewildering circumstances. I think that's why she comes across as passive. She can't cope with Tony's forward attitude most of the time. With regards to the shag, it was her first time and it hurt, but the book says she reflected on it and remembered it as pleasurable.

I'm late to the party - we taped it when it was on and watched it last night. I thought it was a lovely film, really gentle and beautifully played by all the cast.

I had a boyfriend years ago who came from a small village on the West coast of Ireland which completely coincided with the portrayal of the Irish town, where everyone knew everyone, and all their business. It's one of the reasons that my then BF moved to London, as he found it completely stifling, and that really came across when Eilis went home to see her mother. It was easy to see how she could become absorbed in that life again.

I think that the trip back to Ireland really crystallised what she felt about Tony and America and showed how much she had changed in herself, and I felt that came across when she was talking to the young girl on the ship - I needed a tissue at the end.