By Colm Toibin, this follows directly on from Brooklyn, which I wrote about earlier this month. It's unusual that I barrel straight on to the sequel of something, but consistency repays itself. You're familiar with the characters, and more in a position to compare and contrast.

There was quite a gap for Toibin, however. This one came out in 2024; the original in 2009.

And there's a big jump in time for the protagonists. Brooklyn was set in the 1950s; Long Island moves forward 20 years or so, to the 1970s.

This is another book that's good to listen to, and Jessie Buckley does a magnificent job of the Irish and American voices.

Long Island gives us Eilis as a married woman, with two children (Rosella and Larry), and a book-keeping job. She lives, as Italian-American husband Tony had always said they would, in Lindenhurst, Long Island, in close proximity to his parents and a couple of his brothers. It's stifling. The family that had seemed warm and comforting to young Eilis seems patriarchal and oppressive to her older self. Frank -- a lawyer, and gay, though the family don't know this (or pretend not to know this) -- is the only one she really relates to.

And Tony? Tony Fiorello. The man she married in haste and loneliness back in the 1950s; the man she came to regret marrying on a return visit to Ireland, when someone more suitable (Jim) seemed to present himself; but also the man she returned to (because, well, how could she not in those days?); and the man who initially did seem pretty nice (although you always worried a bit about that family, and all the baseball, and a certain lack of imagination). Well, Tony is responsible for the dilemma that crashes into Eilis's life in the opening pages.

He has fathered a child with another woman. For reasons unexplained, there can be no doubt about the paternity, and the other woman's husband is determined the child will go to the biological father. He wants nothing to do with it, and will leave it on the Fiorellos' doorstep if push comes to shove.

Eilis, overwhelmed, decides this is a great time to reconnect with Mrs Lacey, her 80-year-old mother back in Enniscorthy. And here, of course, she cannot fail to run into Jim, who by now is engaged (albeit unofficially) to the widowed Nancy Sheridan, a former friend of Eilis's.


It must be time to go back to Ireland...

Toibin offers us three viewpoints, so we get the chance to see the situation in all its complexity.

-- What do you do when your husband has fathered an illegimate child, which his mother insists will be welcomed into the family in some capacity or other? What do you do when you re-encounter someone from your past, and discover all the old feelings are still there?

-- What do you do when you're quietly committed to one woman, and then find you're still in love with the one who let you down 20 years ago?

-- What do you do when you see that the man you've slowly and carefully developed a relationship with, and have agreed to marry, is now distracted by this old love? Do you stand idly by, and watch him drift away? Or do you preemptively seize the initiative, and let the whole town know that the two of you are an item before it's too late? Ultimately, will he be grateful for this intervention, or will he feel trapped?

It's all really nicely done. The impossible triangle, from which at least one person will have to emerge badly hurt.

Interestingly, Eilis, whom I'd totally rooted for in Brooklyn, lost my sympathy somewhat in this continuation. It wasn't Eilis's fault. She didn't realize until right at the end that Nancy was in the picture at all. But I definitely found myself barracking for Nancy (while hoping she won't live to regret the way she forced the situation at the end). Eilis is now sleek and American-elegant and bossy, while Nancy is homely and heavyset and humble. Who would you back?



And there's so much telling detail.

I loved the picture of the small town, where everyone knows you, and who your family is, and what you're doing (always). There is no escape... I remember that scenario pretty well. And I feel I know those families who are congenitally incapable of being honest with each other, where so much goes unspoken, and just sits and festers under the surface.

Both Eilis and her mother have changed. Twenty years make a difference.

Eilis, formerly so passive, is now much more decisive -- too decisive with Tony, perhaps, to the point of intransigence. But, then, this is an impossible situation he's put her in. And this all-over-you Italian-American family (was this a stereotype?) would do your head in, for sure. You'd have to grow some armour-plating to deal with them.

Mrs Lacey is also now much more independent. We left her fragile, having been ground down bit by bit by the death of her husband, the departure of first her sons and then Eilis, and -- the final blow -- the death of Eilis's sister, Rose. She'd have definitely loved Eilis to stay on after that visit that's recorded in Brooklyn. But she has been on her own all this time. She has toughened up. One son, now rich, lives nearby. There's some arrangement with him about the house when she dies. And it doesn't include Eilis.

And Eilis really doesn't read the situation of her second return very well. Ordering a ton of new appliances for her mother's house, essentially over her head, was never going to be a good move. Yet I know that instinct too. You're desperate to DO something. And all you can do is buy things...

Unless you stay, of course... Unless you do throw in your lot with small-town life again, pick up where you left off, try to fit back in. But Mrs Lacey is Tony's ally here, as she was at the end of Brooklyn. Back then, she told Eilis she belonged with her husband (the husband she'd only just heard about). This time, she's prepared to travel to the US. A curious decision, and perhaps an unlikely one. But she obviously feels marriage is for life. So maybe she wants to personally make sure Eilis stays married. Or maybe she wants to read the riot act to Tony. The new tough Mrs Lacey would be a fine match for Francesca, the Italian-American matriarch.

So there's obviously room for a 1990s sequel... Eilis and Jim have missed each other twice. In parallel constructions they have both hidden someone from the other, and that someone eventually comes storming out of the woodwork to claim them. Yet there's obviously an enduring spark between them. What would it take for them to finally end up together?

I hope we don't have to wait 15 years to find out...