How long does it take to read Brooklyn?
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín takes about 4 hours 48 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 48 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2009. 262 pages, about 72,050 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 48 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours |
The page count is the median across 13 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In Ireland in the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one of many who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving behind her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of her new life -- and finally, she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. As she falls in love, news comes from home that forces her back to Enniscorthy -- not to the constrictions of her old life, but to new possibilities which conflict deeply with the life she has left behind in Brooklyn.
Subjects: Irish, Women immigrants, Fiction, History, Social life and customs, Irish fiction
