Book Review Brooklyn By Colm Toibin Novels & Stories

"Opposites attract, babe." Brooklyn glanced at Harry and bit her lip. "So they say," she murmured. "Have you read anymore of the book?" Harry asked and Brooklyn thought of the book that told her all about werewolves. "A bit," she lied. She had read every single page. "A bit?" Harry said with a smirk. "Fine, all of it," Brooklyn muttered. "And?" "Why are you asking questions when you're in my head?" Brooklyn asked. "Because I'm sure it won't be long before you block me out," Harry said.

Sloane The Brooklyn garden was exactly right. Not grand. Not trying to be grand. Just a walled garden in the middle of the city that had somehow kept itself separate from everything around it. Old stone walls covered in climbing things. Rows of chairs on grass that was genuinely green. Flowers that looked like they had been chosen by someone who understood that the best flowers looked like they had not been chosen at all. Emma had understood.

For someone who insisted he didn’t enjoy spending time with me, Elian had stopped checking the time nearly an hour ago. He broke the silence first. “Can I ask you something?” I glanced sideways at him. “You just did.” He sighed dramatically. “You know what I mean.” “I do. I simply enjoy making you work for it.” “I’ve noticed.” His lips curved despite himself before he looked ahead again. “Brooklyn.” “Hm.” “You never actually answered me” I stayed quiet for a moment. “What about Brooklyn?” “You grew up there, didn’t you?” “Maybe.” “What was it like?”

“When I say I grow up in a three-bedroom in Brooklyn I want you to understand that I mean a three-bedroom in Brooklyn.” The corner of his mouth moves. Just slightly. “I know,” he says. “I like Brooklyn.” I look back at the house. “Of course you do,” I say. “You have the whole of this and you like Brooklyn.” He almost smiles. “Brooklyn has better coffee.” “It absolutely does,” I agree. -----

It was a flash-forward, technically out of order, written by feel rather than by plan. She read it back. Her hands were shaking slightly. Not from fear. From something adjacent to fear that was the opposite of it — the specific trembling of something that had been held still for a long time, being allowed to move. She saved the file. Changed the name. Things She Kept. Saturday, she went to Brooklyn. The market, Rosa, the chicken tamales, the familiar barrel, and the cold December air. Caleb beside her with his coffee, the easy rhythm of it, the city doing its Saturday thing around them.

He thought about how often those two things aligned — the vast and the intimate, the city and the single conversation — and he thought about how the city was made of nothing but those conversations, millions of them, happening all at once, each one small and each one, to the people in it, everything. He got off at the right stop. The station was smaller than the one he'd entered, less grand, the kind of station that served a neighborhood rather than a destination. He came up from the subway into the Brooklyn cold and stood on the pavement for a moment, getting his bearings. The air was different here — still cold, still December, but with a quality he couldn't name, something about the build

Brooklyn pulled out a granola bar from her now dry bag and took a large bite from it, trying to focus on the numbers on her computer. Hunter was by far the most distracting and forward man she had ever met. It had been nearly impossible to hold the boundary between them, but Brooklyn tried to hold strong. It was so tempting to reach out and yank his mouth to hers again and cherish the taste of him. She loved the way his inky black hair contrasted with the bright yellow iris. His jaw was so sharp and defined that he almost looked fake with his matching high cheekbones.

Once upon a time, Eloise had found New York so daunting. Its people, its busy streets and that damn Brooklyn bridge. Eloise chuckles lightly to herself when she remembers how terrified of the bro dog she used to be. Now, so much has changed that all those feel like someone else’s experiences.

"TMI, Brook, TMI." After a few seconds, I remove my hand from her pouting face. "You're such a buzzkill." "If not wanting to hear all the gory details of your sexcapades makes me a buzzkill, then so be it." I can't help the slight smile that tugs at the corners of my lips. This is one of the things I like about Brooklyn. No, not hearing about her overactive sex life, which she is always eager to share in vivid detail, but that she's so light, sunny, and full of energy. I enjoy being around her even though she's always in perpetual motion. It can be exhausting, but it's a good kind of exhausting. Most of the time, it allows me to escape from myself, and that's almost always a positive.

I was breathing, and it was enough. The silence of the dead phone in my bag became a strange sort of companion as I wandered deeper into Brooklyn's winding arteries. The residential calm of Heights gave way to the boisterous, sprawling life of Cobble Hill. The city here was not a skyline to be admired from a bridge but a collection of vibrant, humming details: the scent of garlic and sizzling onions from an Italian restaurant, the thump of a bassline from a basement bar, the rainbow glow of neon signs reflecting off wet asphalt.