Long Island is Colm Tóibín’s sequel to Brooklyn. Twenty years have passed, and Eilis is the mother of two nearly grown children, Rosella and Larry.
A man comes to the door one morning and tells Eilis that her husband Tony has made his wife pregnant. He tells her that he won’t have the child in his house, and when it is born, he’s bringing it to her. When Eilis talks to Tony, she says she won’t have the baby in her house. No one consults her, but she learns that her mother-in-law plans to raise the child. Eilis doesn’t want this either, because she lives in a small cul-de-sac next to the homes of her in-laws. For the last 20 years, everything has been about Tony’s Italian family, and no one has shown any curiosity about Ireland at all.
Eilis decides to fly to Ireland to see her mother and decide what to do. Her children will follow in a few weeks.
To understand what happens in Ireland, it helps to know how Brooklyn ended, so if you haven’t read it and plan to, you might want to stop here.
Twenty years before, Eilis flew back to Ireland for her sister’s funeral and stayed for the summer. She had already married Tony, but for some reason that I can’t remember, they kept it a secret. In Ireland, which Eilis didn’t want to leave in the first place, she met Jim Farrell. He was close to asking her to marry him when she fled back to New York.
Jim has remained single, but lately he has been seeing Nancy Sheridan, Eilis’s best friend, and they have decided to get married, but they are keeping it a secret until after her daughter Miriam’s wedding. Eilis returns confused about what to do about the situation at home. She wants to talk to Jim, but sees no way to do it for a while. She knows nothing about Nancy. When she finally sees Jim, the spark is still there.
I was a little frustrated with these people and their secrets, which cause all the problems. There’s Tony’s secret and the fact that he won’t discuss it with Eilis but figures the situation out with his family instead, showing just how much of an outsider Eilis is. There’s Eilis and Tony’s original secret marriage, which created the situation with Jim. Then there’s the secret engagement.
If you like your stories all settled and wrapped up in a bow, this may not be the book for you. I can handle some ambiguity, though, so I liked it very much, although maybe not as much as I liked Brooklyn.
Just as a side point, Tóibín throws in an appearance by Nora Webster from a prior book, a character I understand is based on his own mother.
What? Me Read? 