Book review: ‘Brooklyn’ again, and just as good

Colm Tóibín's 'Long Island' is compellingly readable, carefully constructed, and beautifully written; once you start, you’ll be hooked

Colm Tóibín's 'Long Island' could be summed up as “Brooklyn revisited”: even the shape of the story, in which the attraction of Ireland vies with the attraction of the US, is replicated.

• Long Island 
• Colm Tóibín 
• Picador, €16.99 

The sequel to Colm Tóibín’s hugely successful 2009 novel, Brooklyn, shares the same characters and the Enniscorthy connection. 

It is compellingly readable, carefully constructed, and beautifully written. Once you start, you’ll be hooked.

Long Island could be summed up as “Brooklyn revisited”: even the shape of the story, in which the attraction of Ireland vies with the attraction of the US, is replicated.

Eilis Lacey, who chose Brooklyn over Enniscorthy first time around, is now Eilis Fiorello, 20 years married to Tony Fiorello, an Italian-American plumber, with two teenage children. 

He and his parents and two of his brothers have adjoining houses with unfenced lawns in a cul-de-sac on Long Island. The fourth brother, Frank, a wealthy bachelor, lives in Manhattan. 

The extended family meet for Sunday lunch at the parental home. Eilis is the only person not of Italian descent, and is often teased by the more outgoing Italian-Americans. 

She is relieved when her mother-in-law gives her permission to miss the lunch.

There is tension between the two women since a visit from an Irishman who told Eilis that his wife is pregnant by Tony, and that when the baby is born he will leave it on their doorstep. 

Eilis believes him and is horrified. She tells Tony that it is his problem, and she will not look after another woman’s baby.

While Tony evades confrontations, his mother lets Eilis know that she will look after the baby, if it comes to it. 

Eilis replies: “I will not tolerate this child being brought up in your house, in plain sight of us here.” 

Facing this impasse, with months to wait, Eilis decides to visit to her mother in Enniscorthy, whom she has not seen for 20 years. 

The children, who have never met their Irish grandmother, will follow later, for her 80th birthday.

One of the first people Eilis asks her brother about is Jim Farrell, the man she fell in love with on her last visit home, but abandoned because she and Tony had secretly married before her trip.

He is still a bachelor, still running a popular pub, and is said to have a girlfriend in Dublin. In fact, he is secretly engaged to Eilis’s former best friend, Nancy, who runs a chip shop.

Her mother has changed, and the Enniscorthy gossip that they both delight in soon becomes repetitive. 

Eilis enrages her by buying a new cooker, a fridge, and a washing machine, which remain in their boxes for weeks. 

She is verging on hostile when Eilis talks of her American home and her children. Eilis starts to regret having planned such a long stay.

She takes refuge occasionally at her brother’s ramshackle house on a cliff at Cush, above a long sandy beach, and it is here that she has one of several meetings with Jim. 

The romance is rekindled, leading to a dramatic denouement with a surprise twist that is a perfect counterpoint to the drama of the beginning, with the news of “this awful baby”.

But the real pleasure lies in its quiet, richly detailed account of the characters and daily life of Enniscorthy. 

The nuances of small-town life, the constant vigilance that everyone lives under, the oft-repeated stories in a world not much changed since the turn of the last century are gloriously evoked and often laugh-aloud funny. 

People may dismiss this novel, as some did Brooklyn, for its domestic detail, but Tóibín knows that the idiosyncratic builds to a convincing evocation of time and place and keeps the reader hooked.