Long Island
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3.7 • 238 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
When an Irishman knocks on Eilis Fiorello's door on Long Island, the news he brings looks set to jeopardize the stability of the family life she and her husband Tony have built together. The arrival of this stranger will send Eilis back to Ireland and to the people she had left behind twenty years earlier. Did she make the wrong choice leaving? Is it too late now to take a different path?
Praise for Long Island
'Wonderful' Elizabeth Strout
'Intensely moving' Douglas Stuart
'Magnificent' The Times
'The work of a writer at the height of his considerable powers, a story of ordinary lives that contains multitudes' The Guardian
'Eilis from Brooklyn is thoroughly grownup now. She's such a living creation: distinctive, guarded, forceful, watchful' The Observer
'Tóibín dramatizes secrecy and its consequences better than almost any other contemporary novelist' The Sunday Times
'Colm Tóibín's rich talents as a novelist need no further enumerating. You just have to read everything he writes' The New Statesman
'Heartbreaking, wistfulness, cracking dialogue . . . This is Tóibín at his best' The Times
'In Long Island, Colm Tóibín has finally given us a follow-up to Brooklyn . . . I read it in one sitting, thrilled to be back with the characters that captivated me last time' The Observer
'An entrancing follow-up to Brooklyn, a moving coming-of-age story and a portrait of the plucky immigrants who fuelled America's post-war boom' The Economist
'Somehow Tóibín makes a book like this - sparely written, elliptical, ambiguous - as immersive as the richly
detailed biographical novels that he has written in recent years. He is a magician' TLS
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The tragic beauty of this heartfelt tale reminds us that sometimes it’s the things we don’t do that define us. In 1976, rocked by a scandalous revelation about her American husband, Eilis Lacey returns from Long Island to her hometown of Enniscorthy, Ireland, with her teenaged children. Her long-ago love Jim is still there, still unmarried, and there are still sparks between them—though Eilis’ old friend Nancy is also still there, and totally in love with him. Colm Tóibín’s writing overflows with tenderness and compassion, particularly as his characters contend with life’s hardest knocks. As the perspective shifts among Eilis, Nancy, and Jim, we hear the volumes spoken in the things these three leave unsaid. Long Island takes place two decades after Tóibín’s celebrated historical novel Brooklyn, though you don’t need any knowledge of that book to enjoy this one. This bittersweet story will tug at your heart in a way that’s absolutely worth it.
Customer Reviews
Very well written
Makes you feel like you’re right there in Ireland
Not believable
Colm Toibin should get some women to read his drafts and explain things about women if he is going to write a book from a woman’s perspective, for example how a woman is likely to feel about the news of her husband’s infidelity, how likely a mature woman is to buy an expensive wedding dress which is the first one she has even looked at, and how likely a woman is to think her mother will be thrilled to have new white goods delivered that she has had no say about. And so on. Could not keep reading this book which was boringly written and so often off-key about the main characters
Fascinating gripping emotional roller coaster
Loved the depth of characters, scenes, portrayals of family life and cultures