The purpose of teenage children, at least in our family, was to go out and find a part-time job, then entertain us around the dinner table with their work stories.

One daughter waited tables at a pizza parlor. This was an authentic pizza joint, mind you. The owners put their fingers together and shook them, just like you see in the movies. And this was a part of the country rich in 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-generation immigrants, cooking their native foods the way grandma taught them.

And mixing it up with the other recent-comers. The pizza master’s wife claimed both Italian and Irish ancestors. “A little Gaelic, a little garlic,” was how she put it.

Maybe you’ll get an idea how that happened by reading Colm Toibin’s novel, Brooklyn.

Its heroine, Eilis, shows brilliance and promise, but Enniscorthy, her Irish hometown, holds little opportunity for the energetic and the enterprising. Her brothers work away in England.

A Irish-immigrant priest paves Eilis’ way to a new life in Brooklyn. He arranges everything she needs — room in a boardinghouse, job in a department store, night classes for her further improvement.

Living among other Irish newcomers, Eilis eats her breakfasts under the mother-hen vigilance of the landlady. The woman dishes out advice meant to save them from catching cold or losing their virginity.

The priest throws Friday-night dances, a great way to expend the energies of the young folks (and build this colony-within-a-city). Will Eilis go? With her housemates? Which ones? Will she put on her lipstick and join flouncy-dressed, easy-laughing ones? Or are the quiet, spinsters more her speed?

Keep your eye on the dance floor, where the Gaelic meets the garlic.

And there’s always the danger that, having made her way in the New World, the old one might call her back and not let go.

Toibin portrays an era in Brooklyn that I’m sorry I missed. I found his story gripping up until the halfway mark. After that, Eilis spends every page “wondering” and “dreading” and “realizing” instead of deciding, talking and going. You’ll like her, but you’ll want to light a fire under her.

Photo credit: wallyg on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Graphic created on Snappa.com