THE BOOK CLUB: ROSITA BOLANDselects some question submitted by reader to put to author Colm Tóibín about his latest novel, Brooklyn

What inspired you to write Brooklyn?(from Mary Comer)

"The book was inspired in one way by my reading, especially Jane Austen and Henry James. The scene at the dance in Enniscorthy early in the book with George and Jim is based on a scene in Pride and Prejudicewhen Mr Darcy is rude. One of the last sentences in the book is based on one of the last sentences in Portrait of a Lady.

“But it was also inspired by the changes which took place in Ireland in the twenty-first century, by the arrival of immigrants, by watching the Chinese, the Nigerians and the Poles and trying to imagine how they felt about Ireland and about home. The plot, such as it is, was inspired too by a story told in Enniscorthy when I was twelve which I heard and which stayed in my mind, but that was very little because it did not include the psychology of the protagonist or any sense of her inner life. But nonetheless, it gave the book a cleaner structure which it might not have had otherwise.

On the characters of Rose and Miss Fortini (from Eleanor, and Barry Cook)

“The novel is patterned and most things happen twice or happen with echoes of each other. There are two tall houses with stairs. There are two older women who run those houses. There are two bossy/ sisterly figures. There are two beaches. There are two men. There are two dance halls. There are two families. I did not set out to create these patterns, they emerged as I worked, and if I found them satisfying I put them in, but I tried not to make them too obvious or the connections too clunky.”

On the characters of Rose and Miss Fortini (from Eleanor and Barry Cook)

"Some of my novels – The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship– and some of my short stories are set in the contemporary world. Others are set in the past. I write whatever most strongly comes to me. I have known writers who were forced to ignore what Stalin said they should or should not write about and others, indeed, who had to do the same with John Charles McQuaid. I think it doesn't much matter when novels are set or what they are about. I notice that Ulysses doesn't deal with the Irish War of Independence or the first World War. And I notice that there is no description of the Battle of Waterloo in The Charterhouse of Parma. In fact, the hero of the latter was not sure whether he was at that battle or not, but he was so in love that it hardly mattered. I think it is important for writers to pay no attention whatsoever to anyone who wants them to write about one thing or another."

On the character of Father Flood (from Niav and Frank Bouchier-Hayes)

"I was interested in creating the figure of a priest who worked with emigrants. He has a great deal of energy and in Brooklynin these years his congregation is dwindling, people are moving out to Long Island, not many emigrants are arriving. He likes being a fixer, but there is nothing else to him. He wants nothing in return. There were priests like this in every large city in North America and Britain. I realise that if you put the figure of a priest into a novel now, readers might feel that there is something coming, but not in this book."

On the writing style of the novel (from Bernie Q)

“I was trying for a sort of simplicity which would hold the reader. No elaborate sentences or tricks in the narrative. Just write it down, the story, and try and make it true. I may have failed. I’m sure I failed. But it was something I would never have tried when I was starting – my first two novels, for example, play with time. Brooklyn does not play with time. There are no flashbacks. It moves forward without display. I would never have had the confidence to try that years ago.

“I was trying to find a subdued rhythm for the book, one that the reader would barely notice. I wanted to reflect the protagonist’s powerlessness in a sort of powerless prose, but the job also was to hide enough energy in the sentences to avoid complete greyness. I was working as though making drawings in pencil, with a lot of sharp detail, but also with a good deal of shading and a good deal left blank to be filled by the readers imagination.

“The American poet Louise Gluck has spoken of “sentences that are clear, communicative and unshadowed” and I was fascinated by the possibity of writing “unshadowed sentences”. I realise that I did not do this in my previous novel The Master, where every single sentence has a shadow and a style on display. This time I wanted to reduce the music to close to zero and see if...

On his research (from Emer)

... I could still get the range of expression and emotion I wanted for the book.”

“I used a number of sea journeys I have been on myself, one especially from Fishguard to Rosslare when I was sick all the way and another to the Aran Islands. The business of the bathroom being locked happened...

On why the book ended in Enniscorthy, no Brooklyn (from Conor McCloskey)

on a boat going up the Red Sea from Port Sudan to Port Suez in 1986.”

“I was interested in the idea that distance in space can equal distance in time, and that being away and returning is not an easy or a light experience. Therefore it was essential that Eilis return to Ireland in June when the weather was good and days were long. I wanted the familiar life to take over so that the old life, the one in Brooklyn, which has seemed so rich and full of novelty, would crumble."

On the ending (from Poppy, Emer, Bernadette and Marie O'Leary)

“I don’t want to give the ending away, but I need to say that it was always there as the ending. To some extent, I was inspired by the ending of

Portrait of a Lady

but I was also using the story as I heard it in the first place. I think it’s important in a book to allow the reader’s imagination do as much work as the words themselves.

“Therefore, there are feelings you have to guess, and scenes that are deliberately omitted (such as her first parting from her mother; such as her arrival in the United States), and there are other scenes that are described at some length so that a picture of her psychology can emerge, or that the reader can be lulled by detail without realising that detail becomes character. (In film or on the stage, you can have the characters appear.)

"Thus the ending would have to come not as pure completion, which you get say in Middlemarch, with every loose strand tied up and the future dealt with. This book ends in the middle of things, or at the point where life begins, or at the point where the story ends. And the reader's task is to fill in the rest. I think it's important for me when I am working not to know anything more about the characters than I narrate in the book, and nothing more about what happens to them after. This means that each detail has to be precise."

This is an edited version of readers’ questions, and Tóibín’s responses. The full text can be read at irishtimes.com/blogs/thebookclub