Long Island

Twenty years have passed since the events in Brooklyn. Eilis and her husband Tony live on Long Island, as does the rest of Tony’s family. The couple now have two teen-aged children. One day, Eilis receives a visit from a stranger who shares information that disrupts her seemingly idyllic family life. Eilis decides she needs to get away to clear her head, and travels to Ireland for the first time in 20 years.

Back in Enniscorthy, Eilis finds her mother unchanged, and she drives Eilis a bit crazy from the beginning. Realizing her home hasn’t been updated in years, Eilis immediately buys new kitchen appliances which her mother insists she doesn’t need, instructing the delivery crew to leave them in their boxes while she “thinks show more about it.” Meanwhile Eilis reconnects with her best friend Nancy, now a widow, who invites Eilis to her daughter’s wedding in a few weeks’ time. Inevitably, Eilis also runs into Jim Farrell, who once courted Eilis and has never married. Instead of clearing her head, Eilis now faces even more complications.

I loved the structure of this novel, with a narrative that rotates among the central characters such that the reader knows much more than any one of them. It’s just a matter of time before their actions intersect, but when and how will that happen? And how will that affect them individually and together? The story has just as many twists and turns as a well-written mystery, with more of an emotional punch. I loved it. show less

We pick up the story of Eilis Lacey in the 1970s, some twenty years after the events of Brooklyn: her marriage is in trouble, and she returns to Ireland for her mother’s eightieth birthday, reopening some of the questions unresolved before.

Again, at the level of the plot it’s basically a slightly updated nineteenth-century novel, but Tóibín uses this structure to drill deep into the psyche of an Irish small town and to take us (uncomfortably) closely into the minds of his characters. There’s a lot of fun stuff about the impossibility of going back or of finding neat resolutions to real human problems, and about the unreasonableness of old people. But, crucially, it seems to be a story about the inability of normal people to show more communicate properly. It’s full of things that can’t be said, or characters who are unable to say the things they should say, whether that’s because of social inhibition or inability to press Button “A” at the crucial moment. (And you would have to be at least as old as the author to remember what Button “A” was…) show less

If you have not read Brooklyn, the first book in the Eilis Lacey series, do that before you embark upon this next book in the series. (It may be sufficient to watch the beautiful film version of that book.) Given the ending of this one, at least one more book is MANDATORY and lord do I have a love/hate relationship with cliffhangers!

Long Island picks up about 20 years after the end of Brooklyn. Eilis and Tony have moved, with the rest of Tony's family, to neighboring houses in Lindenhurst, Long Island. Tony's family's plumbing business is a success. Eilis and Tony have raised two children, Rosella and Larry. Everyone is living a placid suburban life amongst a sea of family members who are up in each other's business all the time. I am show more going to avoid spoilers in this review, but I need to cover something that happens in the opening pages which sets up the rest of the story. If you don't want to know, stop reading now.

Tony has done some plumbing in a local home and it appears he and the lady of the house cleared each other's pipes. Long story short, she is pregnant and her husband has said he will not raise the baby and will deliver it to Eilis and Tony's doorstep upon its birth. Eilis had put her foot down and said she is not raising another woman's child and if any family member takes in the baby she is leaving. Having reached a standoff Eilis leaves Tony to decide what he is going to to and runs off to her mother's home in Enniscorthy (County Wexford I believe) after having been absent for 20 years. Those who read Brooklyn will recall that last time Eilis ran off to Enniscorthy immediately after marrying Tony she had a romantic relationship with Jim Farrell. She gadded about town with Jim and another couple. For readers who read Brooklyn the fact that Eilis is living in Long Island with Tony is, I guess, a spoiler regarding the outcome of her relationship with Jim. So here we are, years later. Jim has never married and runs the family pub, and has never fully gotten over Eilis. Her return presents many complications in his life. I will not get into that because it is the heart of this story. Eilis needs to figure out the rest of her life, and her choices will impact many people in Ireland and America.

I don't want to say more, but the story is beautiful and enveloping. It is a quiet story, as we expect from Toibin, but not as quiet as the other books I have read by him. Those books were fully character studies, but this leans more into plot. Also, in this book we have three POV characters though Toibin usually focuses on one character. In Long Island seeing things only from Eilis's perspective would not have worked. Wed need to see things from the other perspectives to fully understand the stakes in Eilis's decisions. Also, the other main characters, Jim and Nancy (Eilis' former BFF and also half of the other couple who Jim and Eilis hung out with in the Ireland-set portions of Brooklyn) are really great characters. I loved spending time with both. They manage to be very steady but still full of surprises.

This is great storytelling. If you want to take up residence in an Irish village for a little while this is a great choice. (All of Toibin's books that I have read are great choices for this.) Already looking forward to book 3. I just hope it comes faster than this since 15 years have elapsed since Brooklyn came out.

I listened this, and Jessie Buckley's narration was great except when she was talking like the Long Island Italians, who all sounded the same regardless of age, education, or gender -- and also that is not at all how LI Italian people sound. Luckily that was a tiny fraction of the narration after the first half hour. show less

This is a book that Colm Tóibín has maintained that he would never write, a sequel to Brooklyn. After more than 20 years in America, Eilis Fiorello (nee Lacey) faces a personal/family crisis, and the realisation that decisions have been made no matter what she has to say.

She takes a holiday to visit her mother in her small Irish home town, Enniscorthy, but in doing so, she is revisiting the path not taken, a man she didn't marry, a life she didn't live. While there, she reflects on her life in the US, disagreements with her Italian American in laws about the Vietnam War, politics, what it means to be American. Did she make the wrong decision? As she points out, she doesn't want to wish her life as it turned out away - this life has show more included her two children with Tony. Now, though, she has time to reflect and make decisions on the next part of her life, or does she? In both Long Island and Enniscorthy, there are significant silences, things that people notably don't, won't and can't say about what they think and feel.

I understand why other readers of this novel are hoping for a sequel, and I would certainly read more about Eilis, but I think the frustrating ending is true to the characters and settings of her story - there could be more to tell but there isn't a tidy happy ending to the dilemmas she faces on either side of the Atlantic. show less

Like Mad Men, possibly best enjoyed as a high-class version of low-brow material. It's a melodrama but so tenderly written - veering from stress to heartbreak. Unlike in Brooklyn, we roam between characters but we're also deprived of its definitive and dramatic conclusions. Teeing up a trilogy?

So there is an Eilis Lacey series! I don't remember much about Brooklyn, the first one, even though I liked it. This second book left this reader knowingly frustrated at the end, but it's an excellent yet disconcerting trip from Lindenhurst to Enniscorthy. Eilis is devastated when husband Tony's infidelity results in his fathering a child that will not be accepted by the cuckolded husband, a client of his plumbing business. Tony's act seems to be a one-off, but there is never an adequate explanation of his journey off the rails. Eilis refuses to accept the likelihood of the baby to be brought to her doorstep and also forbids any of her in laws to accept the child. Her scheming mother-in-law works to change her mind, but Eilis uses her show more mother's 80th birthday as an excuse to return to Ireland after twenty years away. There she encounters Jim, a pub owner with whom she'd had an affair and then fled back to Tony and her family, and their desire for each other has not cooled, especially for Eilis, who is so wounded by her husband's betrayal. Her own mother is a piece of work - a gossiping hypocrite who nevertheless truly loves and appreciates Eilis and Tony's son and daughter, who have made the trip with her. Jim is secretly engaged to Eilis's best friend Nancy, a widow. Jim and Eilis' passivity is brutally evil to Nancy, and no matter what they decide for their future, it's going to have a miserable outcome. There will be a difficult reckoning for the third book, and engaged readers can speculate and name their own adventure for the two families. show less

On the first page of this novel, Eilis Lacey Fiorello receives an unexpected visitor, a man who claims that her husband Tony impregnated his wife. He tells Eilis that when the baby is born he will deliver the child to her house. Just in case anyone who saw the film adaptation of Tóibín's novel Brooklyn and thought that Eilis and Tony would live happily ever after, they are swiftly disabused of the notion. Set 20 years after the first book, now in the mid-1970s,, Eilis is living in a small enclave of houses on Long Island with Tony's parents, his brothers and his families. Eilis feels isolated in a family and culture where even her own children resemble their father and only identify with their Italian heritage.

In Brooklyn, Eilis is show more defined by her indecision and inability to assert her desires. A older, wiser Eilis lays down the law with Tony that she will not accept another woman's baby in her house. While Tony makes up his mind, Eilis travels home to Enniscorthy for the first time in 20 years to celebrate her mother's 80th birthday, with her teenage children joining her later in the summer.

Meanwhile in Ireland, Jim Farrell - the man who courted Eilis on her last visit when she did not reveal her marriage to Tony - is romantically involved with Nancy, a widowed mother who was once Eilis' best friend. The arrival of Eilis in Enniscorthy is like a pebble dropped in a pond sending out ripples throughout the community. Nancy, sensing a threat, begins to hasten plans to announce her engagement with Jim. She's right to worry, and Eilis and Jim are immediately drawn to one another. Jim, for his part, is agonizingly unwilling to state his desires and leaves it to fate to which of the two women will choose to commit to him first.

The inability of anyone in this book to talk about their true feelings is extremely frustrating although from personal experience that appears to be an Irish and Irish-American trait. It's a wonder that anyone tries to hide anything because in this small town, people find out everything anyway and talk about it behind their backs. While there are times I want to reach into the book and throttle the characters, it is a well-written novel. Told from three points of view it's an excellent display of how choices made in context are selfish, but appear perfectly show less