Long Island

4 4 out of 5 stars | 11,919 ratings

Price: 17.05

Last update: 08-23-2024


About this item

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Stunning.” —People * “Dazzling yet devastating...Tóibín is simply one of the world’s best living literary writers.” —The Boston Globe * “Momentous and hugely affecting.” —The Wall Street Journal *

From the beloved, critically acclaimed, bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving novel featuring Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work in twenty years.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at work, an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting and suspenseful.

Long Island is a gorgeous story “about a woman thrashing against the constraints of fate” (Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air). It is “a wonder, rich with yearning and regret” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).


Top reviews from the United States

switterbug/Betsey Van Horn
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Brooklyn!
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2024
Read the previous book, Brooklyn, or see the movie. That will set you up nicely for where this one starts. Brooklyn, the novel, is short, understated—in fact, it wasn’t until the end that I appreciated it fully. But Long Island? Not just the best of the two books, but a deeply felt surprise. I went into this not expecting much; in fact, I thought it would be a strained sequel. Wow, was I ever wrong! Long Island will make my top ten of the year. These characters do not go away when you close the last page. I’m hoping for a trilogy. But I am not going to give even circumspect clues about how Tóibín ends things. That in itself would be a spoiler.

Long Island takes place twenty years post-Brooklyn, sometime in the 1970s now, and Irish-born Eilis has two teenage children with her husband, Italian American born Tony Fiorello. Tony has made a mess of things just recently (all for the reader to discover in the first few pages), and it is practically impossible for Eilis to think peacefully on her own. She is surrounded here in a cul-de-sac by Tony’s family in several of the houses. Everyone in the family knows everyone’s business, it’s just too much for Eilis right now.

Eilis’s mother and a brother are in Ireland, and have never met her children. She resolves to return home for a long visit, stay several weeks (if not months) before her children fly up to accompany her for their first visit. Of course, there’s drama in the gossipy village of Enniscorthy where Eilis grew up, and ghosts from her past that are living, breathing individuals, are ready to haunt or heat up at every turn. Besides her difficult mother, there’s the man she left behind, Jim Farrell. He runs one of the most popular pubs in town. Has never married.

Most of the novel is set in Ireland, as we follow Eilis and her children. The pace is perfect, never ever a dull moment. The prose reads with the alacrity of a gazelle, sprinting freely, yet fully dimensional in details and the authenticity of human dilemma. It’s real, folks! It’s suspenseful and thrilling, and the stakes just get higher and tighter as the pages turn. Oh, those stakes---a few went almost straight through my heart and bled me out.

Don’t worry---there is nothing melodramatic about this novel—that’s just me with my heart in their teeth. It is just as restrained as it needs to be, while also being fulsome and forthright. You never know what will happen next. The riskier the conduct, the more your own heart will pump and panic in equal measure.

What you have and what you left behind rub up against each other, and Eilis is compelled by unfinished business back in Enniscorthy. Broken bonds lay open and exposed, the harm to all the characters gradually revealed. As Eilis appraises her life and considers her options, she fully grasps the urgency to go back to her past in order to secure her future.

I must add my awe at how Tóibín develops characters with such sublime attention to the minute contradictions in human behavior, and how our outward-facing temperament may be highly interpretive. For example, Jim acts like what we know as *the strong silent type.* Is that why he is fiercely selective with his words? Tentative with weighty actions? Guarded about his life? Well, as quiet and restrained as he is, there is more than one way to interpret his personal style and cautious choices. The ending will blow you away, and that’s all I will say about that.

The author effortlessly crafts his tale, and he never intrudes on the action. Tóibín’s cast run the show—they fluently forward the plot with palpable intimacy. And enigma. For all their transparency, the reader won’t easily pierce the inexorable. The author steps out and lets them at it.

Eilis—the entire cast-- continue to carry on in my life. I can’t let them go, they are flawed, unforgettable, human. Eilis especially is inscribed in my personal atlas of eternal literary characters. In the space where truth-in-fiction exists, Eilis Lacey will endure. The story’s spry, subtle, and scintillating style was brilliant. I want another sequel and I rarely say that!

Addendum: Norah Webster makes a cameo appearance. Background color basically. But it made me think about the Lucy Barton/Olive Kitteridge-verse. Tóibín has well established the Eilis Lacy-verse, and I'm a fan of him continuing to explore these nervy characters in both Enniscorthy and Long Island.
Robert Pugliese
4.0 out of 5 stars Good Story / Disappointing Ending
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2024
This is a very good story but I was so disappointed with the ending. There is none! There was no resolution to anything. Not one single issue was resolved. This story screams for a third book to tie up the loose ends and bring closure to all that’s been left undone. One can only hope that the author shares that sentiment.
Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars I Wanted This to be Better
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2024
This was a bit of a disappointment for me. Though the characters are rich, the story is disappointing and unfulfilling. Leaving us hanging for the next in the series doesn’t work for the reader in my opinion.
Sunny Monday
5.0 out of 5 stars Colm Toibin at his very best
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2024
A beautifully written novel about how we human beings’ lives are shaped by the flaws in our own personalities. The novel picks up Eilis Lacey’s life from the novel Brooklyn twenty years on. She now has two teenagers and lives in a (symbolic?) cul de sac on Long Island with the whole of her Italian family close by. A man appears on her doorstep and tells her that his wife is pregnant by Eilis’s husband and that he is going to dump the baby on Eilis’s doorstep when it is born.. What follows is a fascinating portrait of Irish village life and Eilis’s effect on her old lover Jim’s life when she returns to visit with her children. I found her a closed, unlikeable character lacking warmth. After twenty years she still had not made a single friend in America to whom she can talk. Mr Toibin engages the reader in such a way that, even though Eilis may not be simpatica we need to know how her life will turn out. I really recommend this novel.
Marsha Ronquist
4.0 out of 5 stars confusing story
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2024
Not sure how I feel about this story. In many ways it was disappointing. It doesn’t really have an end. The story just stops.
Bonnie Brody
5.0 out of 5 stars How Much Do I Owe Myself?
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2024
Prepare to put everything aside once you open this novel. Colm Toibin has done it again, writing a follow-up to his much-loved 'Brooklyn'. I recommend that readers check out 'Brooklyn' prior to reading 'Long Island'. This will familiarize you with Eilis and Jim Farrell, two main protagonists in this book.

'Long Island' takes place a couple of decades after Eilis last visited Enniscorthy, her hometown in Ireland. She is now married and has two teen-aged children. She lives on a cul-de-sac with her husband's family - brothers, in-laws - always intruding in her life in both subtle and coercive ways. Eilis feels stuck. She left an overbearing mother in Ireland and now finds herself encrypted into her husband's family which makes it very difficult for her to individuate.

One day, totally out of the blue, there is a knock on Eilis's door and she is delivered some life-changing news. It impacts her family in big ways and it also involves her husband and his family. She feels subjugated. The only member of her husband's family who is helpful is Frank, her brother-in-law. He is a successful lawyer and is the only one of his family to live apart from the others. Eilis tries confiding in him but he, too, is enmeshed in the secrets and machinations of her husband's clan. He does, however, give her some money that will help her to go back to Ireland.

Eilis leaves for Ennniscorthy with no finite plan for return; all is open-ended. She stays with her mother who is mean-spirited and critical of Eilis. While in Enniscorthy, she refuels relationships from her younger years and gets quite involved with the people from her past.

Toibin has a marvelous way with words. I felt I was right there with Eilis, facing the difficult decisions she had in front of her. This is a novel of love lost and love found, the importance of making the right decisions and the fallback from the past that lands in the future. There is grief, hope, love, friendship and family in this novel. Toibin keeps it lively and there are some major surprises in store for Eilis and the town of Enniscorthy. I love Irish literature and Mr. Toibin is one of the reasons why.

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