The Brooklyn Rail

Picking up twenty years after Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín’s Long Island continues themes of longing, missed connections, and the destructive silences between families and lovers. In Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey was a conflicted young woman married to one man (in America) and in love with another (in Ireland). Now she’s a wife, mother, and working at a small business. Tony’s married brothers and parents all live nearby on a cul-de-sac that physically isolates Eilis—the only non-Italian in the bunch. Early in the novel, an angry stranger shows up on Eilis’s doorstep, claiming his wife is pregnant by Tony and he plans to drop the baby on Eilis’s doorstep. Eilis doesn’t respond, just stands impassively at the door until the man leaves, and then decides that to have the baby in her house would be impossible. She wants to discuss the situation with someone but realizes that she has no one—her sister Rose is long dead, she’s distant from her mother, and she’s not close to her two Italian sisters-in-law. The deft description of Eilis standing, trying to find someone to support her is one of the most quietly powerful moments in the novel, setting up the tone: “She picked up the receiver as if she were about to dial a number. She listened to the dial tone. She put the receiver down and lifted it again. There must be some number she could call. She held the receiver to her ear as she realized that there was not.” Her loneliness and isolation are painful, but she is not meek and she rapidly makes a decision without anyone’s guidance—she sees quickly that “a part of her life was ended.” Eilis’s anger remains unspoken but shows up at dinner when, instead of serving Tony his plate of stew, she slowly dumps it in his lap.

Eilis has two teenagers—Larry and Rosella—both of whom play minor roles in the rest of the novel. Although told from Eilis’s point of view, the opening chapters give a full portrait of the passing years and the erasure Eilis experiences at the hands of Tony’s family. She tells her employer, “Tony’s family often behave like they never left Italy.” And part of this behavior is a refusal to make space for Eilis, her Irishness, and how she might feel about Tony’s infidelity. Rather than discussing the situation, Tony refuses to tell Eilis what he plans to do, leaving her to find out from her brother-in-law Frank. When Frank informs Eilis that Tony and his mother have made plans behind her back, Eilis decides to go to Ireland to see her mother. Her family—Tony, Rosella, and Larry—have “no real interest” in her home, but she decides to invite her children to come with her to meet their Irish grandmother. And while traveling to Ireland enables Eilis to leave her husband behind, she must deal with events she left behind in Ireland some two decades before.

Tóibín is often celebrated for his prose—it’s sparseness and accessibility—but there are times when I found the rhythm of his writing to be without music. There are rare moments when he allows his prose to sing such as this passage where Eilis is reminiscing, “The late May days were blustery, often threatening rain. It was like Ireland … when hints of summer would be dulled by a faint chill in the wind. The raked light forced her to concentrate.” Of course, the spare dialogue works well to create tension between characters, such as in this passage between Eilis and her husband Tony: “‘What if I say I don’t want you to go?’ Tony asked. ‘You are the one who caused all this. It wasn’t easy for me to tell your children about you.’ ‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’” The shifting point of view also helps to build tension and creates allegiances between the reader and Eilis, her former best friend Nancy, and their shared love interest—Jim Farrell.

When Eilis arrives back in Ireland, Nancy is now forty-six, widowed, with adult children, and struggling to manage a chip shop on her own. We learn that Nancy and Jim Farrell have been having a very private affair for over a year. They want to marry but have opted to wait until after Nancy’s daughter’s wedding—a delay that proves disastrous. While they discuss their future together, Tóibín (perhaps a bit clunkily) reminds us of their history: “during a summer many years before, [Jim had] been in love with her best friend, who had let him down badly by going back to America, abandoning him and Enniscorthy without warning.” Jim suggests they tell no one about their plans until after Nancy’s daughter is “well married,” and so Nancy waits. But then Eilis arrives. Nancy doesn’t tell her of the engagement and neither does Jim, and while this may read as melodramatic, the refusal of any of the characters to clearly state their feelings to each other creates a slow boil of tension that comes to a head by the end of the novel. This is another brilliant study of repressed feelings and the destructive nature of silence.