‘Long Island’ is a worthy sequel to ‘Brooklyn’
Colm Tóibín is a writer from the town of Enniscorthy, in the southeast of Ireland. He has written eleven novels, several nonfiction books, and two collections of short stories. He’s best known for the 2009 novel “Brooklyn.” And now, he has released a long-awaited sequel called “Long Island.”
“Brooklyn” was a masterpiece; “Long Island” is a worthy sequel. The books were released fifteen years apart, but it was worth the wait.
In “Brooklyn,” we meet Eilis Lacey, a young woman living in Enniscorthy in the 1950s. She’s trained as a bookkeeper but can’t find work in her native Ireland. So she takes the advice of an Irish priest and moves—by herself—to Brooklyn, New York. She was in her early twenties.
Soon after moving, she meets someone with a very different immigrant story. Tony was born in America, but his family is Italian. He lives with his parents and brothers in a crowded, two-room apartment. They’re a boisterous, southern European family. Eilis is smitten; Tony’s family embraces her; and the two get married.
The main conflict in ‘Brooklyn’ develops slowly. After marrying Tony, Eilis has to return to Ireland unexpectedly to attend a funeral. While she’s there, she’s torn between her new life—exciting, Brooklyn, Tony—and her old one—Ireland, family, tradition, history. Her mother doesn’t want her to go back to America.
In many ways, “Brooklyn” is a timeless immigrant story. How much of yourself do you take with you and how much do you leave behind? You can re-invent yourself in a new place—but do you ever really change? How can you find comfort in a place with different food, customs, and values?
“Brooklyn” was adapted into a movie in 2015, starring Saoirse Ronan as Eilis. It was as well-received as the novel. And with “Brooklyn,” Tóibín found commercial success as an author.
He has written several books since, but he recently returned to Eilis, Tony, and their families with a new novel titled “Long Island.” Twenty years have passed, and it’s now the late 1970s. Eilis and Tony have two adolescent kids. Tony’s parents and brothers live on the same cul-de-sac; they all built new houses next to each other on a suburban street. They’re a big, happy Italian family with one Irish member in it.
Eilis has reconciled herself to her role as the outsider in her own family, banished from extended family meals and often not included in the family gossip. But then—and this happens in the book’s first chapter—she gets startling news.
A man shows up at her doorstep. In a threatening tone, he tells Eilis that his wife is pregnant and that Tony (Eilis’s husband) is the father. Tony had been their plumber, and had gotten the wife pregnant. And the man says he will drop the baby on Eilis’s doorstep as soon as the baby is born. He wants no part of a child that’s not his.
“Long Island” is about how Eilis, Tony, and their family deal with the news. Fed up with the drama of Tony and Tony’s family, Eilis returns to Ireland—where she is met with the drama of her own family and her own past.
“Brooklyn” told the story of a young person making the immigrant journey. She went to America out of a sense of duty, and because someone else suggested it—not because she wanted to go. When she first arrived, she lived in a boardinghouse, grown up, but not yet independent.
“Long Island” starts two decades later and it tells the story of an older person who has raised a family in a new culture, but still feels drawn to her homeland. The Eilis we know in “Long Island” is not the passive Eilis of the 1950s, but an assertive, modern woman in changing times.
She stands up to her father-in-law in an argument about the Vietnam War—and then is disinvited from the family meals after that. Instead of feeling bad or apologizing for having an opinion, as she once might have, she relishes her independent time, away from the family. “Can’t you control her?” one of Tony’s brothers asks, exasperated. The answer was that Tony couldn’t.
“Brooklyn,” the first novel, was about Eilis’s life, thoughts, and experiences. “Long Island” gives us a view into the thoughts and interior worlds of three characters—Eilis, her childhood best friend Nancy, and her onetime love interest Jim. This approach helps us see how the three characters interact with each other, and what their motivations are.
There is some good drama in the plot of “Long Island,” but the narrative really shines when we learn the thoughts and emotions of the three main characters. Through their thoughts, we as readers join them as they contemplate how different their real lives are from their desires, the tragedy of bad timing, and the unanswerable questions of what might have been.
Jeff’s take
“Brooklyn” is one of my favorite books. I remember reading it soon after it came out and I just absolutely loved it. I’ve read several others by Tóibín since then—“The South” is good, too. I was just ecstatic when I saw there would be another book with these characters—well, ecstatic but a little worried. Whenever I see a sequel, I always wonder if it will be as good as the original. And I’m telling you, these are both excellent. You don’t need to read “Brooklyn” to understand “Long Island,” but it helps.
I read “Long Island” in just a few days. The first day I picked it up, I read about a third of it. And then I read the rest over a couple more days. I think you can read it in English. The prose is very direct and accessible. Of course, there are new vocabulary words, but these are both great books that I think you should be able to read in English.
But if you don’t want to, both are already translated into multiple other languages. Again, they are called “Brooklyn” and “Long Island” by Colm Tóibín.
Great stories make learning English fun
