In Brooklyn: A Novel, Colm Toibin chronicles the experience of a young woman named Eilis Lacey, who leaves Enniscorthy, Ireland, to start a new life in Brooklyn, New York. Like many other migrant novels, Eilis's relationship to "home" and Brooklyn is depicted through her experiences and feelings. Eve Walsh Stoddard states that “The house points rather than determines its referent. So we might say that “home is where the heart is” or home is where one's family is,” in her essay “Home and Belonging Among Irish Migrants: Transnational Identities Versus Positioned Identities in Evening Light and Brooklyn: A Novel” , (156) This makes readers constantly wonder where Eilis's heart is and where she believes home is. Brooklyn: A Novel, the concept of home is prominent and represented in more than a physical location ; but a meaning, a state of mind, and a feeling of belonging. At the beginning of the novel, when Eilis realizes that it is time for her to pack her bags and leave Ireland, she feels that "She would rather stay at home, sleep in this room, live in this house, do without clothes and shoes. The arrangements made, all the fuss and talk, would be better if they were for someone else” (Toibin 31). This describes her home in Ireland as a feeling of belonging for Eilis. She wishes she wasn't the person who had to go through all of this and doesn't want to be in her shoes when it comes to moving away from home. This further portrays Stoddard's theory of Sigmund Freud, particularly the “uncanny” as the double is a key figure in Freud's uncanny. (Stoddard 150) Eilis associates the atmosphere of her home with sadness over her departure and puts her mother and sister's feelings before her own when she thinks, “... middle of paper ...... in Brooklyn with Tony and when he is in Ireland with his mother, which proves Stoddard's theory of cosmopolitanism. Throughout the novel, the representation of home is described as a meaning, a state of mind, and a feeling of belonging to Eilis. Although the distance from her ancestral home in Ireland caused her great hardship and homesickness, she overcame her insecurities and adapted to her new home in Brooklyn, giving her a new identity. In Brooklyn: A Novel, Toibin effectively portrays the experiences of many immigrants through Eilis and shows how an unknown, empty place can transform into a home. Works Cited Toibin, Colm. Brooklyn: a novel. New York: Scribner, 2009.Stoddard, Eve Walsh. “Home and Belonging Among Irish Migrants: Transnational Identities and Identities Placed in Evening Light and Brooklyn: A Novel.” Eire-Ireland 47.1 & 2 (Summer 2012): 147-171.