Long Island by Colm TóibínMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In addition to buying books, I have a never-ending queue of holds at my local library. Whenever I see something I might want to read, I request it from the library if they have an e-book or audiobook version. (I travel for nearly half the year, so there’s little point putting a hold on the physical copies.) Months later, when I get that lovely notice from the library telling me my turn has come, I often don’t remember who recommended the book nor why I thought I’d like it. With Colm Toibin’s Long Island, I know I enjoyed an Eleanor Wachtel interview with Toibin but I have no idea why I reserved that particular book. I didn’t realize it is the 2nd in a series. Luckily, you needn’t have read the first one, Brooklyn, to enjoy the second.
Sometimes books show up just when I need them. As I edit the first draft of my novel, Red Rules, it has become clear that I need to add more of the interior life of my protagonist. In my quest to show instead of telling, I have focused too much on his actions and simply assumed the readers would infer his emotions from those. Toibin’s novel takes the opposite approach: it is almost all about the thoughts of the three principal characters.
The story mostly takes place in the Irish village where Eilis Lacey grew up. She’s returned to Ireland from Long Island, U.S.A., where she’s been living with her Italian-American husband, Tony, their two teenagers, and his close-knit extended family. The novel starts with a stranger coming to the house in Long Island to tell her that Tony has impregnated his wife, and when the baby is born the man plans to deposit the baby on their doorstep for Eilis and her husband to raise. Tony admits to fathering the child and is reluctant to accept Eilis’s demand that he refuse to have anything to do with the baby. Needing time to think about next steps, she returns to her Irish village, ostensibly to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday. While there, she reconnects with Jim, the lover she’d abandoned when she left for New York 20 years earlier. He’s still single and still in love with her. Unfortunately, just before her reappearance he’d agreed to marry local widow, Nancy. The engagement has not yet been announced, and now he’s torn: pursue the dream of a life with Eilis or stick with his commitment to Nancy.
Some readers may feel that the book has too much pondering and too little action, but Toibin does a masterful job of getting you inside the heads of each of the major characters. You can empathize with each of them, and the impossible predicaments in which they find themselves. There are no easy answers, no obvious “right thing to do”.
The audiobook has outstanding narration. In fact, the audiobook version has an interview at the end with narrator, Jessie Buckley, about the joys and challenges of rendering each of the characters and their unique ways of speaking. She did a brilliant job of it. I’m beginning to understand why some readers search for audiobooks by narrator rather than author. (That said, even brilliant narration, like brilliant acting, can’t save a dud story. But it can certainly enhance a good one.)
If you like character-driven stories, I highly recommend this novel. Now I plan to go back and read Brooklyn.
View all my Goodreads reviews
