In Long Island, Colm Toibin catches up with Eilis Lacey some twenty years after the events of Brooklyn. As readers will recall, Eilis faced a very tough decision in that novel. Having met and secret married Tony, an Italian-American plumber from a big family, Eilis returned to Ireland to mourn her sister Rose. During that time she reconnected with Jim Farrell, a charming young man preparing to take over his father’s pub. Not knowing of her marriage back in New York, her mother and her friends encourage her to pursue Jim and come back to her homeland. Eilis is sorely tempted, but in the end she returned to her husband.
Now she and Tony live in Lindenhurst, in the type of family compound Tony always dreamed of, surrounded by the houses of his parents and his brothers and their wives. Eilis and Tony have two teenage children, the studious Rosella, preparing for Fordham in the fall, and her affable but unserious brother Larry. Eilis laments that, due to her in-laws’ influence, her children are far more aware of their Italian heritage than they are of anything to do with Ireland.
Very early in the novel, so early I don’t consider this a spoiler, Eilis get some devastating news when a stranger knocks on her door. The man informs Eilis that his wife is pregnant and that Tony is the father. He also swears that, once the child is born, he will bringing it to Eilis’s door for them to deal with.
When Eilis confronts Tony, he doesn’t deny it. He’s known for some time, and even worse, so do his parents, his brothers, and their wives. Eilis is infuriated by her in-laws forming a conspiracy without her. Little by little, she finds out that they have been discussing this matter, making arrangements she is certain she should have been consulted on. She comes to the decision that she will not have anything to do with the child, and in the meantime she is going back to Ireland, using her mother’s upcoming 80th birthday as an excuse.
Unbeknownst to her, Eilis’s visit causes complications for her old friends. Her best friend Nancy Sheridan is now a widow running a chip shop, earning her the ire of the neighborhood due to her late-night drunken clientele. She’s preparing for her daughter’s wedding and making her own plans for the future. Also making plans is Eilis’s former potential beau Jim Farrell, stuck behind the bar he now owns, single and lonesome after all these years, but now with a possibility at late-in-life happiness if Eilis’s return doesn’t knock him off course.
Toibin is a master of the slow burn, continuously adding small details until a fuller picture emerges. First, the reader develops tremendous sympathy for Eilis, the eternal outsider among her husband’s close-knit family. Then the reader will find their sympathies extending to Nancy and Jim, as the consequences of the choices forced upon them come into view. It’s like watching an emotional car wreck in slow motion, helpless to do anything to intervene.
Eilis Lacey might be the fictional character I’ve most cared about as an adult. When I read Brooklyn about a decade ago, my heart broke for her. And in Long Island, it broke all over again, as the ramifications of her earlier choices came back to haunt her. My only complaint with Long Island is that it’s too short. I’m desperate for more information about Eilis. I want to know that she’ll be okay.