Although readers could begin with Colm Toibin’s latest novel, Long Island, I strongly recommend reading Brooklyn (2009) first, for Long Island is the second in the Eilis Lacey series. Instigated by her sister Rose and aided by a parish priest, Eilis Lacey leaves Enniscorthy, Ireland, in the 1950s, ending up in Brooklyn, New York where she marries Tony Fiorello, a plumber from a large Italian family. When Eilis’s sister Rose dies, Eilis returns to Enniscorthy, having never told anyone there that she had married Tony or that she has returned only temporarily. In her mind, she wants to avoid hurting her mother, who has just lost her other daughter. While in Enniscorthy, Eilis becomes romantically involved with Jim Farrell, but returns to Brooklyn and Tony.

With Brooklyn, the stage has been set for Toibin’s Long Island. It is now the mid-70s and Eilis in her forties, living with Tony and their teenage son and daughter on Long Island with Tony’s omnipresent family as close neighbors. Some time ago, Tony and his brothers had successfully started the Long Island construction company first mentioned in the preceding novel, Brooklyn.

Life seems to be going well until a stranger’s sudden appearance on the Fiorello’s doorstep changes everything. The man informs Eilis of his wife’s pregnancy following a repair job that Tony had completed for the couple. Insisting he won’t have a bastard child in his home, the stranger informs Eilis that he will leave the newborn on the Fiorello’s doorstep if necessary. Eilis sees no reason to question the man, a fellow Irishman. Furthermore, she shares his views of the child. Time has come to leave Long Island again, and Eilis plans to return to Enniscorthy for her mother’s eightieth birthday. Her teenagers, who have known only the Fiorello side of the family, accompany her.

As she runs from the present, Eilis must face her own past. Jim Farrell has never married. Although he has become involved with Eilis’s former best friend, Nancy, his heart still belongs to Eilis, who had left him when returning to Brooklyn after her sister Rose’s death. Now Eilis, Jim, and Nancy all have stories to tell.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an advance reader egalley of this second in Colm Toibin’s Eilis Lacey series. Presumably, this isn’t the last. Hopefully, Toibin fans won’t need to wait another fifteen years to learn the rest of the story.

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If you've never read Colm Toibin I truly don't know what your waiting. He's one of the gretaest writers of our generation. His books are alwsy special and you always think back on them after you read them. His latest is the sequel to Brooklyn but don't worry you fdon't need to read it to understand this book (though it's a terrific book so you should read it!) Anyway, this story is about an Italain family that lives together in the same neighberhood and share all things together. When someone has as affair and get a woman pregnant it all goes sideways for them. The husband of the gilted party threatens to leav the baby at the doorstep after its birth. The woman says no way and wants nothing to do with it. What ensues is all about choices people make and what right you have to live the life you want and not one that is chosen for you. The novel flows along at a pace where you are never bored. I finished the book on a longhaul flight and only put it down to have my meal. The character of Eilis which is the main character is who is Irish is one of those characters that is well developed that you actually feel like her life is walking along the pages. I highly recommend this book and if you don;t belive me Oprah picked it as her most recent book club pick as well as Parnassus book store. If that is not enough to push you to read it I don't know what will. Please read and enjoy a good old fashioned story by a brilliant writer. Thank you to Simion and Schuster for the read along with Netgalley. This also is a perfect book club pick!!

I was excited to read the sequel to Brooklyn, which I enjoyed even though I had problems relating to Eilis, I just didn't understand the way she thinks. After reading Long Island, I now don't understand how any of the main characters think! It's an interesting story, but very slow, and I just can't relate to any of the main characters, who all just seem to let life happen to them. 3-1/2 stars

I received an ARC from the publisher free and gave my honest opinion voluntarily.

Long Island by Colm Toibin is apparently the sequel to Brooklyn, which I have not read, but it really made negligible difference in reading this book. It is a story about a family, but primarily about the woman of the house, Eilis Lacey Fiorello, a middle-aged mother of two teenage children, married to Tony. They live in a house, which she loves, in Lindenhurst, Long Island, on a cul-de-sac which they share with homes of her husband’s two brothers, their families, and his parents. She is relatively happy until one day a man shows up at her door explaining that while Tony was doing a plumbing job he also was bedding the man’s wife, who is now pregnant. He explains that when the child is born he will bring it here as he will not have it in his house. Well, she will not have it in her house, either, and she tells her husband. Soon her mother-in-law is there telling her that she will raise the child. Eilis refuses to see it every day. She has no solution. She makes a decision. She is going to Ireland to see her mother for the woman’s eightieth birthday. When her children hear, they want to come as well.

Eilis is a strong woman in a very difficult position. She is stubborn. She is not rude about it or loud, but she will not have it. Returning to Ireland is challenging. She left things behind there, things that will complicate things for her and for her life. She is complicating their lives as well. There are some moral conundrums in this story. Morals can be viewed as situational, sometimes. There is also personal desire. And the old, “the grass is greener…” thing. It is a complicated and emotional book, although the emotions are largely held in check. Toibin has told a story free of judgement, which is not an easy task. Excellent read. I’ll have to go back and read Brooklyn. Thanks, Colm Toibin!

I was invited to read Long Island by Scribner. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #Scribner #ColmToibin #LongIsland

Long Island was the first book that I have read by Colm Toibin. I did not read the first book in this series, Brooklyn, and I felt that Long Island worked as a stand alone too. There was enough back story throughout the book that I knew what had happened 20 years prior.

Long Island starts with Eilis finding out that her husband has an illegitimate child and the mother's husband is threatening to leave the baby with Eilis and her husband Tony. I enjoyed the family dynamic with Eilis and her Italian husbands family. The close knit family that left her just outside. Due to the news of this baby Eilis decides to go back to Ireland for her mothers 80th birthday. Once there she falls back into life as it was before moving to America. She catches up with her best friend Nancy and even runs into Jim, her lover the last time she was in Ireland.

I felt parts of this book were really slow and i started to skim. There was a lot thrown into the book that I thought didn't pertain to the main story. I am not a big fan of infidelity in books and this one was full of double standards.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an ARC of Long Island by Colm Toibin for an honest review.

Book Review: Long Island
By Colm Toibin

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

It’s been 20 years since Tobin’s best selling Brooklyn hit the book shelves. Like many of you, I wondered what would become of Eilis Lacey once she returned to Tony and her American home in Brooklyn. The sequel, Long Island, picks up when Eilis is forty years old, still married to Tony Fiorelli, has two teenage children, and is working as an accountant for the Fiorelli’s family business. Three generations of the sizable, tight knit Fiorelli family all live, eat, work and play along side one another on a cul de sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island. Eilis while relatively content with her life, finds she is still an outsider in the family, has no one to confide in and is lonely in her marriage. What is missing in her life becomes painfully clear when an angry stranger appears at her home promising to deliver her husband’s baby to her doorstep when it is born in August. The Fiorelli’s stand by Tony and (maybe try “while instead of “and”?) Eilis returns to Ireland to sort out her troubles. She discovers that not much has changed in the 20 plus years since she visited after he sister Rose’s funeral.

Eilis, as do all immigrants, left many things behind; family, a past love, troubles and the possibility of another life. Long Island is about what may have been and what might still be possible. Toibin, in his uncomplicated and quiet prose, deftly and warmly portraits Eilis’s dilemmas, longings, and struggles to discern her own path. I found myself caring about Eilis, and the other main characters. I was invested in their happiness and my emotions rollercoastered in concert with each turn of events. Some readers will be dissatisfied by certain ambiguities, but I appreciated the author’s invitation to consider the possibilities as I found my mind drifting back to characters and actions in the novel long after I turned the last page.

I highly recommend Long Island for fans of Brooklyn, and other quiet examinations of domestic life.

Many thanks to the author Colm Toibin, @ScribnerBooks and @NetGalley for the pleasure of reading this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fans of Colm Toibin’s novel Brooklyn will be ecstatic to know that Eilis Lacey’s story is continuing in Long Island.

Brooklyn is the story of Eilis who leaves Ireland for Brooklyn, where she met and married an Italian American, Tony. Soon after their wedding, she returned to Ireland where she met and fell in love with Jim. Knowing she was pregnant, she returned to America and her husband, while brokenhearted Jim remains a bachelor.

Long Island finds Eilis a mother of two, overwhelmed by her husband’s close, intrusive, family. Her life is upended when she learns that Tony had an encounter that resulted in a pregnancy, and the woman’s husband warns that he will leave the baby on Eilis’ doorstep. Eilis is adamant that she will not have the baby in her house, and if Tony and his family keep it, she will not stay with him.

With her mother’s 80th birthday coming, Eilis returns to Ireland to be with her, and to give time for Tony and his family to let her know their decision, and to decide herself what she will do if they keep the baby. The children will later join her to meet their Irish family.

Meanwhile, Jim has been involved with Nancy and they have secretly decided to marry after Nancy’s daughter’s wedding is over.

But seeing each other again, Eilis and Jim realize they still have feelings for each other, and secretly met, finally consummating their relationship. But secrets don’t stay secret, and Nancy and family pressure Eilis and Jim, their choices constrained by many considerations.

Eilis’ life on Long Island and her small Irish town are beautifully realized. She does not feel at home in either place, and both communities intrude into her affairs. There is a profound sense of isolation as Eilis struggles with her choices. Wonderfully, we are also allowed into Nancy’s and Jim’s inner struggles.

The story is a revisiting of Brooklyn with Eilis in the same position of having to decide between Tony and Jim. The novel leaves us in the middle of things, and eager for the third in the series to resolve the open questions.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

There is no one like Colm Toibin and his character Eilis Lacey to somehow, with such elegant character driven writing, keep me up at night, waiting to see what happens. I can't think of too many non thrillers that kept me up but Toibin's Brooklyn and the new sequel Long Island are two that have. I just love how Eilis will surprise me as a reader, I feel she might even surprise the writer a bit, with how her story unfolds, the decision made, and how she somehow seems to always shift into the spaces and situations she is in and yet still remain uniquely herself.
Thank you to Scribner for the review copy, I am such a fan,

The acclaimed Colm Toibin revisits the central characters of his 2009 novel “Brooklyn.” The novel opens in 1976, 25 years from the conclusion of “Brooklyn.” Eilis Lacy is still married to Tony Fiorello and they have two teenage children. Although they live in a suburban enclave with Tony’s sprawling Italian family, the inscrutable Eilis holds herself at a remove. A stranger turns up on Eilis’s doorstep and tells her that Tony “did even a bit more than was in the estimate. Indeed, he came back regularly when he knew that the woman of the house would be there and I would not. And his plumbing is so good that she is to have a baby in August.” Because the stranger was Irish, Eilis believed him when he announced that he intended to leave the infant on her doorstep.

Eilis had no friends to recount the scene at her front door; however, the Fiorello’s were busy determining how to handle the baby’s arrival without Eilis’s input much less her consent. In response to Tony’s betrayal, Eilis returns to her parochial Irish village, Enniscorthy, for a visit—or perhaps a longer stay — she is unclear. Eilis finds the never-married Jim Farrell, with whom she had a romance 20 years prior before returning to America and to Tony, managing his late father’s pub. Unbeknownst to Eilis (and the town), Jim has become involved with Eilis’s widowed friend, Nancy Sheridan, who struggles to maintain the family chip shop. Eilis, with her rented car and her Americanized attitudes, attracts envy and suspicious scrutiny, including from her own mother. She appears different to her old friends: “Something had happened to her in America,” Nancy concludes. As the story continues, Eilis navigates her renewed connection with Jim and Nancy amidst her marital crisis.

As one would expect of a writer of Toibin’s prodigious skills, he is able to return to characters decades later and write a companion novel that is tender, fresh and moving. He has created an exquisite masterpiece that addresses themes of love, loneliness, betrayal, and loss. Thank you Scribner and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this extraordinary novel.

How do you follow up a perfect book like Brookyln? With a perfect book like Long Island. And what is sure to be another installment coming. The ambiguity, the complicated characters we love to hate but also love, its all there and its perfect again.

BROOKLYN was a memorable novel. I carried the ending with me even after I saw the film.

LONG ISLAND is an equally magical story of how life played out after the ending of BROOKLYN.

I hope there is one more novel about Eilis and one more chance for her to surprise us all.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

A terrific novel, so absorbing, and so exquisitely written. Toibin has such deep familiarity with Enniscorthy, his hometown, and he brings it gloriously to life in all its gossipy insularity. And his tracking of the decision making of his characters is so carefully rendered—the reader is rapt,
One star off for an unresolved ending. I prefer more strings tied up, but a single criticism about a beautiful work of art.

Eilis Lacey is no Eilis Fiorello and living on a plot of land with Tony, their children, and within a whispers distance of most of Tony's family. One day, Eilis opens the door to a man who tells her that Tony has impregnanted his wife and that he will be placing the child on their doorstep. After much thought, Eilis returns to Ireland for her mother's 80th birthday. There, she runs into her past and possibly her future.

I loved Brooklyn with all my heart and dislike this book just as much. This follow-up takes the Tony and Eilis romance apart. Tony has become the man who cheats, and Eilis still feels very much alone when surrounded by people. This book ends at a pivotal scene, based in Ireland, that will either make or break multiple character's hearts. This also makes me believe that this will end up being a trilogy. Toibin has also made the majority of Tony's famly annoying and unlikable, particularly his mother, and I don't understand why. This follow-up broke my heart in so many ways.

Twenty years after the end of Brooklyn, the readers is brought back into the life of Eilis Lacey, a woman who left her home country of Ireland to come to the United States. Eilis is now in her forties, married to Tony, mother of two teenage children, and living in Long Island surrounded by Tony's brothers and parents. The novel begins as Eilis opens to door to a stranger who informs her that Tony had an affair and child with his wife and that once the child is born, he will bring it back to their house for Tony to raise. The remainder of the novel is focused on the consequences of Tony's affair on the lives of Eilis and the people surrounding her.

Having read Brooklyn isn't absolutely necessary but it does lay a more complete framework for the events in Long Island. I enjoyed this novel all the more for having read Brooklyn. I didn't love Brooklyn and found it a bit too love-story heavy for my tastes. I found it a bit hard to be engaged in the story of 20-year old Eilis and I found her rather bland and uninteresting in the prior book. While the first novel included some emotional pieces, I mostly felt untouched by those sections. In contrast, Long Island hit me more profoundly. Perhaps because I'm in my 40s and much more cynical about relationships (the grand ole love stories where love lasts forever), but I followed the events of Long Island with deep sadness and appreciation.

Long Island is deceptively simple and that is one of Tóibín's great skills as a writer. He has the ability to infuse a lot of meaning and deeper impact inside seemingly simple plots. The novel is about freedom (to live and love) and the constraints placed on those freedoms by our families, obligations, our prior actions and decisions, and ourselves. I felt like my heart was breaking for various characters in the book and my feelings for them were complicated, often vacillating between wanting to shake them for their actions and wanting to hug them for their pain. There is a lot of secrecy in this book and that creates tension for the reader who is fully aware of the backstories and secrets of all the characters.

A worthy novel that I connected with on a stronger level than I did with its predecessor. It is a beautifully written and touching novel with complex and flawed characters. Does Eilis forgive Tony and return or does she forge a new life for herself back in her home country, Ireland? I'll leave it up to you to find out.

You are in for such a treat with this wonderful sequel to BROOKLYN by Colm Toibin. After twenty years we find Eilis living on Long Island with her husband Tony and two teenage children. They all live on a cul-de-sac and are thicker than thieves. That is, Tony's family is. Eilis is living a life of quiet desperation. Suddenly, without warning of any kind, a strange man shows up at the door while Tony is at work. This man totally disrupts the normalcy of Eilis's life that will never be the same. And thus begins a story like no other that will have you wondering who anyone can come back from such a shock.. And then we find ourselves going to Ireland as Eilis visits her family.
This is a knock out novel that is bound for book glory. Not to be missed.

I loved Colm Toibin’s novel Brooklyn and was eager to read its sequel, Long Island. The premise of shocking news and how it was delivered intrigued me.

While Eilis Lacey is working at her home office, she receives shocking news from an Irishman who says his wife is pregnant by her husband, Tony. He plans to drop the baby off on her doorstep rather than raise it as his own.

The story unfolds as Eilis decides, rather than deal with her problem, to visit her mother in Ireland, whom she hasn’t seen in twenty years. She feels out of place seeing old friends and relatives, having lived in America. Eilis rekindles her love affair with a former lover Jim, not knowing that he is engaged to Nancy, her best friend. The story is told by Eilish, Jim, and Nancy. The reader is drawn into the story with the love triangle and complicated family relationships. However, the ending is unresolved.

I loved the characters and pacing of the story, which kept me riveted until the end. However, I was disappointed in the ending. This sequel fell short of Brooklyn, which was such a great book. I thank Net Galley for letting me read and review it. #NetGalley #LongIsland #sequel

What an extraordinary writer Colm Tóibín is.

A few years ago, I read The Magician and that was my first novel by him. Even though I had heard of Brooklyn, I have never read it so when I saw this sequel I wasn't sure if it would stand alone but I decided to request it anyway.

I am so glad I did.

This is such a quiet novel. I loved Eilis as the main character. In fact, I loved all the characters and I loved how real this book felt to me. All that repressed sorrow. All the repressed dreams. Loneliness and desire and loss.

The story of a mother torn between her own principles and support of her children and going after her own happiness. The story of a mother trying to save her future. The story of widows learning to make do. The story of a family trying to find a way out of a tough situation. So much said and so much not said.

I loved reading this story and now I am going to have to go back and read every single book this author has written.

with gratitude to netgalley and Scribner for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

From the first page I reveled in being back in Toibin's sure hands. Just that quickly, I gave myself over to caring deeply. And once again, Toibin impressed me with his sensitive portrayal of a woman's thoughts and experience.

I immediately recognized the characters and remembered the quiet drama of the novel Brooklyn. I'm not sure the experience of this book would be as satisfying if you haven't already read it.

This story has the same interiority and gentle ordinariness. Its themes--the consequences of speaking out, the consequences of silence--poetically parallel the first book. The shock that opens this one leaves Eilis clear about what she needs and clearly communicating to all those involved. But that clarity starts to blur, and secrets silence her and the other two lead characters, Jim and Nancy, whose minds we inhabit with equal sensitivity. The ending circles back on the beginning, as the themes continue to cycle through these characters' lives.

I found myself wanting something seemingly impossible--a deeper happiness, for all three to get what they want. Throughout I rollercoastered, alternatively pleased and troubled. How often is a book's outcome this uncertain? The writing is streamlined and easy, belying the strength of my emotional response. It's been a long while since I gave myself over to a book as completely.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the Advanced Reader Copy.

Thanks to NetGalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review!

I loved Brooklyn and read it for the first time fairly recently, so I was thrilled with the news of a sequel! Long Island picks up about twenty years after Brooklyn ends. Eilis and Tony have two teenage kids and they are settled in a cul de sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island with Tony's brothers and parents next door. In the opening pages, an Irish man knocks on the door to tell Eilis that his wife is pregnant with Tony's baby and he plans to leave the baby on Eilis' doorstep as soon as it is born. Drama! Toibin beautifully sets up the tension in the rest of the book with this scene. It feels so unexpected, especially after the romance and happy ending for this couple in Brooklyn. I could barely believe it for a few pages, probably like Eilis, and then was forced to accept it and face whatever happened next! Eilis decides to head back to Ireland for the summer to visit her mother while leaving Tony (and his overbearing mother and brothers) to decide the fate of the baby, and in turn their marriage and future.

Once Eillis is in Ireland, the reader gets alternating chapters from the POVs of Eilis, Jim Farrell (the Irish man she almost left Tony for in Brooklyn), and Nancy Sheridan, Eilis' best childhood friend. I loved this choice for the book and the way it expanded the story beyond only Eilis. We get caught up on the last twenty years for both Jim and Nancy and Toibin repeatedly writes the same time frame from multiple perspectives, which keeps the pages turning. Several times, he provided an interaction between Nancy and Eilis from both perspectives and I found the differences fascinating. Nancy thought she was being sophisticated in a conversation where Eilis thought she was aloof and distracted.

Although it is more of a character driven novel, I think the main plot, pacing, and writing style provide incredible propulsion to the story. It's juicy! I didn't want to put it down! And the close perspectives allow the reader to see exactly what each of these three characters feel as well as the emotions they try to repress. I especially loved the parallels that are inevitably drawn between the small, gossipy Enniscorthy in Ireland and the tight knit Fiorello family back in New York.

The summer over which the book takes place is full of choices for each of these characters for the future as well as reckonings from the choices of their past. While I'm not sure it will be an all time favorite book of mine and it wasn't perfect (I had a hard time with how the dialogue is written - it took almost the whole book for me to accept its stilted nature), I have been thinking about these characters daily since finishing it and I desperately want to discuss it with others who have read it! It is truly a magnificent book that I recommend. High four stars.

If you loved Brooklyn, you will be drawn into this book immediately. No spoilers but my heart broke, but in all the right ways. And like life always does, it teaches us the things we need to grow. Beautiful characters a story that will wind itself up In your heart.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.