The new novel from the author of The Magician and A Guest at the Feast continues the story of one of his most popular characters.

In Long Island, his sequel to the award-winning 2009 Brooklyn, Tóibín returns to familiar territory. Brooklyn begins with Eilis Lacey leaving her hometown of Enniscorthy for a new life in North America. Long Island, set 20 years later, is about her return. In Tóibín’s telling, Eilis’s life with her Italian boyfriend, now husband, Tony Fiorello is, as any astute reader of Brooklyn would have guessed, good but not perfect. Unsurprisingly, Eilis sometimes finds living beside Tony’s parents and his two brothers and their families stifling:

If she decided to go for a walk, one of her sisters-in-law or her mother-in-law would ask her where she had gone and why. They often blamed her interest in privacy and staying apart as something Irish.

So, even after 20 years as part of this Italian family, Eilis is still considered Irish. This difference tells us that when, very early on in the novel, a man arrives at Eilis’s house and threatens to leave the baby Tony has fathered with his wife on her doorstep, her reaction will be very different to how Tony’s family will respond.

This clever premise – not just your run-of-the-mill unfaithful-but-penitent husband – ensures it is perfectly feasible for Eilis to return to Ireland for her mother’s eightieth birthday and, once there, to feel conflicted about returning home.

Once this scene is set, Tóibín constructs an artful narrative that becomes not just Eilis’s story but also the story of Jim Farrell, the man Eilis might have married had she not returned to Brooklyn and Tony, and Nancy Sheridan, who had been Eilis’s best friend. All three characters have to make important decisions about their lives and Tóibín slowly, very deliberately and engagingly, tells the reader how each of the three will make those decisions. As they navigate their way forward, we learn their thoughts and become aware of the heavy burden of the past each carries. Tóibín reminds us that it is impossible to forget the past when deciding the future, but reassures us that this is how it should be. When Eilis, now in Ireland, sees a photo of Tony holding the baby, she remembers that:

His position in the photograph was one she knew because that was precisely how he had often held Rosella and Larry. If she went into the back room, she would find photographs that showed him sitting just like that, with the baby held in the same way.

Tóibín’s great triumph in this book is showing how the past gets in the way of deciding the future. This is most apparent with Jim Farrell, who, regretting his failure to stop Eilis from leaving years ago, finds himself confronted with the same life-changing decision 20 years later. It will be Jim’s choice to either react against his past or recognise the decision he made 20 years earlier was the right one.

Similarly thought-provoking is Tóibín’s other clear message: the power of the mundane when big decisions need to be made. For all three characters, although perhaps most tellingly for the women who have children and parents to care for, the small decisions of everyday life – whether to do with weddings or washing machines – take up a fair proportion of their time. In some cases, the less time spent on making important decisions, the more likely a decision will be made. Hello Hamlet. Here Nancy reflects on the friendship between Jim and Eilis:  

She had seen Eilis and Jim talking to each other in a way that appeared casual, relaxed, almost familiar. It was odd because she had presumed that any encounter between them would be strained and uneasy. But then someone distracted her, someone demanded her full attention, and she did not think about the scene again.

In constructing these three narratives Tóibín’s careful attention to form is striking. Sentences build up like small building blocks, each an important layer in the creation of the larger story. It is Tóibín’s skill that the reader always feels they are in the hands of a master who is confident of the story he is building and well aware of the ideas that underpin it.

Regret, love and self-knowledge will all shape how these three people decide their futures. As Tóibín skilfully brings us along on their journeys, there’s not a page when we’re not aware of the choices they will soon have to make. It’s Tóibín’s magic that we’re also painfully aware, for the three of them, none of it will be easy.

Colm Tóibín Long Island Picador 2024 PB 304pp $34.99

Catherine Pardey has reviewed for Rochford Street Review and The Beast.

You can buy Long Island from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.

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Tags: Brooklyn, Colm | Toibin, emigration, Irish writers, Long Island, sequels