4/5 stars
What's it about? In the unexpected sequel to Brooklyn, we find Eilis Lacey twenty years later, living on Long Island with Tony and their two children, surrounded by the Fiorello family as neighbors. Tony has an affair with a married woman that results in a pregnancy, and when Eilis realizes she may be expected to accept this new child, she returns to Ireland for her mother’s 80th birthday and to decide her future.
How’d I find it? I recently listened to an interview with Colm Tóibín about the release of Long Island on The New York Times Book Review podcast and was sold, as I adored both the film adaptation of Brooklyn, with Saoirse Ronan’s outstanding performance as Eilis, and the original novel.
Who will enjoy this book? Readers of Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett will like Long Island. You don’t have to read Brooklyn first, but you really should.
What stood out? Colm Tóibín writes Eilis beautifully, this character who others find inscrutable but whose mind we get to pick through over the course of 300 pages. The complex interiority of her character is the novel’s best feature, as we don’t get far into the actual events of the story. Without spoiling too much, Tóibín leaves the reader wanting, and the place in the action where he chooses to end the book is abrupt and unsatisfying, almost as if he’d written the other half but wants to string this out into a trilogy. Either way, the writing is sharp, and I would revel in another installment.
Which line made me feel something? “Tonight would be the first time she would ever sleep in a house alone, when there would be no one in the bed with her or in the next room. In all her years with Tony, it was something she had often dreamed about, especially at the beginning of their marriage—slipping away, getting a train or even driving to some town and finding an anonymous hotel to spend two nights away from everyone.”