"Long Island," by Colm Toibin

I am an ardent fan of Colm Toibin's fiction, and have read his novels with great admiration and pleasure, and not a little awe. I have also heard him speak, and he has an amazing, powerful yet warm voice and presence. So I was thrilled when his most recent novel, "Long Island" (Scribner, 2024) came out. This is a sequel to one of Toibin's best known and best loved novels, "Brooklyn" (2009). In "Brooklyn," a young woman -- Eilis -- emigrates from Ireland to the United States in the 1950s, then briefly returns to Ireland, during which time she has to choose between two men, Tony in the U.S. and Jim in Ireland. In "Long Island," we find that Eilis and her husband and children now, twenty years later, live in Long Island, and their lives have recently been roiled by an unexpected betrayal. Eilis, angry and confused, then returns to Ireland to visit her mother and to figure out how she feels and what she should do next. When she sees Jim again, the old conflict in her mind between her husband and her former Irish love gradually returns. The twists and turns of the plot are certainly part of the attraction of this novel, as they were with "Brooklyn." But the reader is even more caught up in the portrayals of the characters. Toibin is so psychologically astute, and writes so well about the nuances of the characters' feelings and behavior, that we feel we are inside the characters' minds and hearts, and yet we wonder about the inscrutable mysteries of those same minds and hearts. His writing is perceptive, insightful, and gorgeous. I will admit -- and this is hard for me to say -- that at times while reading "Long Island" I felt it was just a tiny bit repetitive of "Brooklyn." But of course all sequels need to have some overlap. And nothing could keep me from reading and deeply admiring every novel that Toibin writes. I highly recommend this novel. I suggest reading "Brooklyn" first, if you have not yet read it, but even if you have not and do not, "Long Island" is freestanding, and provides plenty of context about the earlier novel, so you can thoroughly savor and enjoy it even without having read "Brooklyn." (For more on Toibin and his novels, see my posts of 1/28/10, 12/4/12, 1/20/13, 11/9/14, 11/16/14, and 12/6/14).