Long Island by Colm Toibin

Friday, Mar. 14, 2025--San Antonio

Long Island by Colm Toibin was named a best book of 2024 by many top publications.  It is a follow-up to his novel Brooklyn.   Toibin is a good writer.  His style is easy to read and clear and precise.  In this book, the character Eilis has returned to Ireland for the first time in 20 years (from the setting of the first book) to visit her mother supposedly to celebrate the mother's 80th birthday, but really to get away from a problem that has popped up in Brooklyn where her life has been somewhat suffocating from living on a cul de sac that has four houses filled with Italian in-laws.  She is at a point where she must make some major decisions about her life that will affect others--her husband, her children, and her family and friends still living in the small Irish village where she grew up. The book is so well written, that each step of the way the reader can foresee problems that don't have good solutions and the book ends with the reader left in this quandary.  What decisions did every one make?  If this was decided, this would be a problem.  If another decision was made, there would be this a different problem.  All the characters have their faults, so there are reasons for the reader to want the story to go in different ways.  I really enjoyed the book and rated it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.