A Plug

Over at The Second Pass, I review Colm Tóibín's new novel:

It’s a small miracle — and a happy one — that Colm Tóibín named a novel Brooklyn before one of the countless young writers who have colonized the borough over the past decade. (Actually, it was a photo finish. Joanna Smith Rakoff had been calling her novel Brooklyn, but changed it to A Fortunate Age after Tóibín planted his flag.) So instead of the story we may have gotten — and have gotten, with different titles — about pharmaceutical-induced contentment, precocious magical realism or a group photo of millennial ennui, Tóibín reclaims the borough from the hipsters and gives it back to the aspiring immigrants.