Long Island | Colm Toibin

Full disclosure: I didn't read Brooklyn, which was the first part of the story told in Long Island. But I did see the movie, which was fantastic, and felt like it was good preparation for this novel. I learned from a review that some of the characters from these two books are also featured in Nora Webster, which I haven't read (but have a mind to). Anyway, I thought Long Island was a worthy continuation of Brooklyn, although I thought the story was a bit more complicated and less centered on Eilis, the main character. So, if you saw or read Brooklyn, I'd recommend reading this.

This is a story where there's a tremendous amount of restraint both in how the characters behave and in the writing. There's a lot unsaid, which creates tension. I can't dangle a spoiler here, but let's just say that there are some parallels in how the two books end and what that says about Eilis.

Toibin provides a rich picture of the life that Eilis is living in Lindenhurst, Long Island. She's married Tony and she's living Tony's dream of moving his whole family (parents and brothers) to Long Island to grow the family business. It's a family where everything in the family is everyone's business, and Eilis feels isolated and outnumbered. But she makes the most of it and loves Tony and her two teen-aged kids. Everything's going along OK, until one day a client of Tony's comes to her door, announces that his wife was going to be having a baby fathered by Tony, and that he (the husband) was going to be leaving that baby on Eilis's doorstep.

And that sets off a whole chain of events. Intriguing start, right? And it follows, weaving between Eilis's past and present as she returns to her hometown in Ireland for the first time in 20 years.