Long Island

INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER o OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK o New York Times bestseller and Editor's Choice o Named a Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and Kirkus Reviews o Named a Best Book of the Summer by The Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, and the Washington Post o One of Indigo's Best Books of 2024 (So Far) o Named a Best Book to Read in May by Time and the Irish Examiner

"A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect."
--Kirkus Reviews

"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

"Long Island often reads like a masterclass in everything Tóibín can do. . . . These silences and absences at the core of this subtle, intelligent, and moving book mean the reader has to do a certain amount of work--but it is work very well rewarded."
--The Observer (Book of the Week)

"Tóibín uses masterly restraint to dramatize how lives can be destabilized by desire."
--The New Yorker

"With the purposefully plain prose of his fiction, Tóibín is adept at conveying the gaps between thought and language where meaning resides."
--Irish Times

"Tóibín is the consummate cartographer of the private self, summoning with restrained acuity (and a delicious streak of sly humour) the thoughts his characters struggle to find words for, those parts of themselves that remain resolutely out of their reach. . . . This deceptively quiet novel is the work of a writer at the height of his considerable powers, a story of ordinary lives that contains multitudes."
--The Guardian (Book of the Day)

"Riveting from the first page. . . . Long Island is also about how hard it is to go back, in place and time, and against the momentum of earlier choices. "
--The Economist

"Long Island is a stirring journey. . . . [Tóibín] creates a heartbreaking world but does not impose it; instead, he parts a curtain and allows time for a slow, intense deepening of the drama behind it. His characters' possibilities are instantly recognizable as the types of choices we all consider, but he also emphasizes the importance of truly seeing others and reflecting on how their lives might differ from our own. . . . This miraculous novel grows with exquisite intimacy out of the silences left by those who know and feel more than they can say."
--Washington Post

"Long Island reads like a homecoming, as much for the author as for his main character. It's another brick in the wall of a writer who is quietly building an edifice that marks him as one of the masters of contemporary literature."
--Toronto Star

"Heartbreak, wistfulness, cracking dialogue . . . This is Tóibín at his best."
--The Times

"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)

"[A] rare instance in which a sequel is every bit as good as the original. . . . As always, Tóibín's narrative restraint heightens tension and allows readers to fill in the blanks. We marvel at his skill as we watch his characters in Long Island become ensnared in the elaborate web of strategically withheld information and calculated partial truths he has them spin. . . . Tóibín handles these uncertainties and moral conundrums with exquisite delicacy, zigzagging back and forth through time to build to a devastating climax. The tragedy of this novel about the universality of longing is that, even 25 years on, Eilis, however decisive, is still not in control of her own life."
--Heller McAlpin, NPR

"Tóibín's writing is taut, with delightful flashes of humor. . . . A wonder, rich with yearning and regret."
--Laurie Hertzel, Star Tribune

"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."
--Sam Sacks, 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

"What is so gripping about Long Island is how Tóibín shows how one knot threads into other knots. . . . The dilemmas characters face appear all too believable and characters' ways of (mis)handling their problems appear all too human. . . . [Tóibín is] a great novelist who has written another wonderful book."
--Ross Collin, Chicago Review of Books

"[A] grand achievement. . . . A part of Tóibín's genius is the lack of visible effort with which he draws us in, so seamless that we barely register our new surroundings by the time we're consumed. . . . A rarity. . . . There is a kind of powerful calm in this novel, both on a sentence level and in the stately pace of the unfurling story. You feel that this is the destined culmination of a remarkable, lustrous career; you can experience not just your own enjoyment as a reader, but also Tóibín's in the writing of it."
--Megan Nolan, Telegraph (UK)

"Long Island is written in the disciplined, polished prose for which Tóibín is known, and the odd Banvillean flourish he allows himself--'the soft, incessant sound of waves breaking on the strand below'--comes off all the more lyrical for it. Then there is his extraordinary command of voice. Few can so authentically ventriloquise Irish speech, with its unwitting poeticisms--heaven described as one's 'eternal reward'--and repetitions and redundancies. For all his reservations about sequels, Tóibín, a writer evidently at the height of his powers, has written a remarkably good one."
--Irish Independent

"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

"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

"Long Island is about secrets and dreams and the conflict of desire over duty. . . . Toibin's writing is taut, with delightful flashes of humour. . . . 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

"Tóibín . . . writes beautifully about the struggle between the comfort of the familiar and the hope for something better. Like Brooklyn, this book is as much about place as it is people--about what makes a home and how to find your way in a life split between two worlds. . . . The book shines when it gives us such artfully crafted depictions of its characters' inner lives, particularly Eilis's. It's a pleasure to be back in the company of this strong, complicated heroine."
--Columbia Magazine