To Brooklyn, Carlton and Beyond

Eilis travels from Ennisworthy to Brooklyn; Esma from Footscray to Carlton. For both young women these journeys are signficant in terms of the lives they will lead and the people they will become. It is such an interesting time of one's life, when one is so unformed and decisions can have such an impact.

Eilis is the protagonist of Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. At the suggestion of a visiting priest she finds herself leaving Ireland for a new life - job, home and eventually man - in the United States. Toibin captures perfectly this unformed quality. Eilis has the newness of youth; her only baggage a small snub at a dance before she leaves. She is ever so quietly courageous; dealing with new experiences such as seasickness and squabbling rooming-house mates with integrity. Reading this book I found myself thinking of my mother's story. While she didn't travel so far, in her teens she had left her home town for work. These were the times.

This book is an utterly convincing portrayal of Eilis' character and her world. The writing is pared back and lovely. I loved a scene where Eilis goes to confession to tell of her sex with Tony, the priest compassionately offering help "if she is pregnant". It is such an achievement I think that Toibin has taken such a simple story and made it such a beautiful novel.

Eilis has a choice that is a literary choice only. She has married the man she is ambivalent about and is unable to explore the man who might be more suitable, the man of the snub. )This would be her Mr D'arcy ending!) That Eilis loves numbers and her dream is to a bookkeeper must be forgotten as this was not a choice she has in her time. the reader sees these choices but Eilis can and has made only one. The promise and the pleasure of the opening up of new experiences of early adulthood close off as choices are made.

Something in the World Called Love by Sue Saliba explores these questions on more local ground. Esma moves to a share house in Carlton. She is studying poetry and wants to be a writer. She is drawn into a dark intimacy with Kara , a "queen bee" character, a manipulative girl-woman. (They should come with warning stickers, these women). Esma begins to think that there is "something in the world called love" and that is this "love" for Kara. Its an interesting subject the girl crush. Esma is looking for intimacy and a model on which to base her new life. Sue Saliba in trying to capture this unformed nature of Esma's character writes in loose open prose poetry with minimal intrusive punctuation.