Long Island by Colm Tóibín – the road not taken
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Categories: Historical – General/ Literary/ Family Life – General
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Long Island
From critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author Colm Tóibín comes Long Island, a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love- ahead of his birthday on 30th May. Happy Birthday, Colm!
This story revisits Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Tóibín’s beloved work Brooklyn, now twenty years later. Eilis Lacey, now in her forties, lives in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with her husband Tony Fiorello, a plumber, and their two teenage children. Surrounded by Tony’s large Italian American family, Eilis feels isolated, with stronger ties to her native Ireland than to her new home. Despite decades in America, she has not returned to Ireland.
One spring day in 1976, Eilis’s life is upended when an Irishman appears at her door with shocking news: his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and plans to abandon the baby on Eilis’s doorstep. Eilis’s response to this revelation propels the novel’s gripping narrative.
Long Island explores unfulfilled longings and the unrecognized desires that simmer beneath the surface. Tóibín masterfully portrays the thunderous silences in Eilis’s life, turning them into powerful narrative forces. This is a gorgeous, poignant story of a woman alone in her marriage, who rekindles the deepest bonds upon returning to the people and places she thought she had left behind, rediscovering ways of living and loving she believed lost forever.
About Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a renowned Irish novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright, professor, and literary critic. He is the author of ten novels, including Long Island; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award and adapted for the BAFTA award-winning film of the same name; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections, several books of criticism, and a collection of poems, Vinegar Hill. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named the 2022-2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York City.
Reviews
Praise for Long Island
“Momentous and hugely affecting. These pendant novels, will be the fiction for which this wonderful writer is best remembered.” –Wall Street Journal
“Rich and doubly suspenseful… Tóibín, a master of his art, exploits to exquisite effect at the end, leaving us to wonder, yet again, what’s next.” –Los Angeles Times
“Dazzling yet devastating… Tóibín is simply one of the world’s best living literary writers…” –The Boston Globe
“About secrets and dreams and the conflict of desire over duty… Long Island is a wonder, rich with yearning and regret.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Tóibín’s storytelling is rich and full of tension as he explores the complexities of life, the decisions we make, and the consequences that result.” –Glamour
“Fifteen years ago, Colm Tóibín won readers’ hearts with his best-selling novel Brooklyn. Now, with the sequel, Long Island, he just might break them… Tóibín writes beautifully about the struggle between the comfort of the familiar and the hope for something better.” –Columbia Magazine
“Tóibín’s latest sees the return of one of his most beloved heroines from his novel Brooklyn and deftly explores the longings of a woman who finds herself alone in her tilted marriage.” –The Chicago Review of Books
“A close observer of human nature, Tóibín writes with great depth of longing… Often it is what is unsaid, contained in the pauses, that grips the reader’s attention. There is plenty of beauty to savor.” –BookPage
“Quietly devastating… Tóibín is brilliant at tallying the weight of what goes unsaid between people… Tóibín’s mastery is on full display here.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Tóibín writes with unparalleled fluidity and grace. Each character is intricately drawn with psychological acuity, emerging as fully, almost achingly human. Eilis is complicated, fearless, and compelling, much like her brilliant creator.” —Booklist, STARRED review
“Eilis’ fate is determined in a plot twist worthy of Edith Wharton…the author is a master of quiet, restrained prose, calmly observing the mores and mindsets of provincial Ireland. A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.” —Kirkus, STARRED review
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