Long Island: A Novel

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER • OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • New York Times bestseller and Editor’s Choice • One of the Washington Post’s Books to Read This Summer • One of the Globe and Mail's most anticipated books of 2024 “A brilliant, compelling and utterly human story. . . . Long Island is at once about freedom, a longing for it and its costs, and the eventual responsibility that conditions and limits it. This decades-later sequel is a natural and fitting second act after Brooklyn.” —Globe and Mail“You don't have to have read Brooklyn to enjoy the many pleasures of Long Island. It is a masterful novel full of longing and regret. A tale of lovers reconnecting, of compromise, and the settling that can come later in life. Intensely moving and yet full of restraint, I was sad to turn the final page.” —Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain“Heartbreak, wistfulness, cracking dialogue . . . This is Tóibín at his best." —The Times“His best yet . . . It reads like the tensest of stage plays, but with all the pleasures of interiority that the novel form allows. I haven't wanted to hug this many characters in a while.” —Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times and The Happy Couple“Quietly devastating… Tóibín is brilliant at tallying the weight of what goes unsaid between people…and at using quotidian situations to illuminate longing as a universal and often-inescapable aspect of the human condition. Tóibín’s mastery is on full display here.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Tóibín writes with unparalleled fluidity and grace. Each character is intricately drawn with psychological acuity, emerging as fully, almost achingly human. Tóibín is a philosopher of the soul. He understands the complex emotions, the dreams, fear, doubt, and hope that drive human activity. Eilis is complicated, fearless, and compelling, much like her brilliant creator. Readers will be thrilled by Tóibín's return to the story of Irish immigrant Eilis Lacey.” —Booklist (starred review)“An acclaimed novelist revisits the central characters of his best-known work… Eilis’ fate is determined in a plot twist worthy of Edith Wharton…the author is a master of quiet, restrained prose, calmly observing the mores and mindsets of provincial Ireland, not much changed from the 1950s. A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)·       “In this worthy follow-up to his award-winning 2009 novel Brooklyn, Irish writer Colm Tóibín once again proves himself a master of silence and sadness, exploring ordinary lives with steady sympathy and deep understanding. . . . Moving and evocative, Long Island finds heartrending beauty in what’s left unsaid.” —Winnipeg Free Press“Dazzling yet devastating…Toibin [is] simply one of the world’s best living literary writers…Tóibín’s control of this material never wavers… it’s hard to overstate the force of his vision…Long Island tracks, stitch by stitch, the tightening net of social and familial control in that era’s Italian-American and Irish (certainly Catholic) cultures…Tóibín attends to it surgically: The reader is spellbound… haunting perfection.”—Boston Globe “Brooklyn and Long Island…capture the decency and ordinariness of the characters as well as the deep emotional ruptures that drive them toward disorder. The confrontations between these people, so long delayed, feel momentous and hugely affecting. These pendant novels, I think, will be the fiction for which this wonderful writer is best remembered.”—Wall Street Journal“What makes Long Island especially rich — and doubly suspenseful — is that, along with the fallout from Tony’s infidelity, the story is haunted by the consequences of actions taken at the heart-twisting conclusion of Brooklyn… The suspense is amplified by the way Tóibín deftly balances the story between the forces of secrecy and revelation…the characters in Long Island are constantly cautioning themselves not to say anything, for fear of upsetting that fine balance that exists in intimacy as much as in community. But not saying is an act with consequences, too — one that Tóibín, a master of his art, exploits to exquisite effect at the end, leaving us to wonder, yet again, what’s next."—Los Angeles Times “Long Island is about secrets and dreams and the conflict of desire over duty…Toibin’s writing is taut, with delightful flashes of humor…Long Island is a wonder, rich with yearning and regret.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “Moral quandaries abound in Colm Tóibín’s compelling follow-up to “Brooklyn.” Irish immigrant Eilis learns that her husband has impregnated another woman; worse, his family expects Eilis to raise the child. Returning to Ireland for solace, Eilis encounters inertia, judgment – and her former flame. Tóibín’s portrayal of his characters’ wrestling is a sobering story of dishonesty’s toll.” —Christian Science Monitor, Best Books of May 2024"[Long Island] is a story of transformation, but equally of doubt—of what remains unsaid and undecided, and how it wreaks havoc on not only the characters' relationships but their identities. . . . Long Island approaches these themes with Tóibín's deft eye for detail, creating a story that is altogether painful and maddening to witness—and yet impossible to turn away from.” —Shelf Awareness, Maximum Shelf feature