BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: Long Island (Colm Toibin, author)
Historical fiction, literary fiction, immigrant story, Long Island, Ireland, in-laws, secrets, complicated family drama, loneliness, marriage, betrayals, forgiveness, motherhood, friendship.
In Long Island, Author Colm Toibin returns us to Eilis Lacey, the beloved character at the center of his 2009 best-selling novel, Brooklyn. It is 1976, twenty years after we left Eilis in Brooklyn, where she had returned from Ireland, after loving and leaving Jim Farrell. She returned to Brooklyn and her new husband, Tony Fiorello. Now in her early forties, with two teen-aged children, Eilis lives in a small town on Long Island on a street surrounded by Tony’s extended Italian family. Eilis is serious, and quiet, and lonely in her marriage, despite Tony’s close family.
Eilis’ life is upended when the doorbell rings and she is confronted by a stranger who informs her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born he will disown it and deposit the child on Eilis and Tony’s doorstep. She is stunned by the news, and silently formulates a plan of action. She informs Tony and his overly-involved mother that she will not raise Tony’s illegitimate child, and she will not tolerate the child being raised next door by Tony’s mother. She plans a trip to Ireland to celebrate her own mother’s upcoming 80th birthday to coincide with the child’s birth, and invites her teenage children to join her there during her visit.
Back in Ireland, Eilis contends with her irascible mother, her alcoholic brother and the very nosy small town community. Among those who remained there are her past love, Jim, and her former best friend, Nancy, who is now several years a young widow. Unbeknownst to Eilis, or even to Nancy’s own children, Nancy and Jim have become lovers and plan to marry after Nancy’s daughter’s upcoming wedding. The love triangle is replete with secrets and clandestine meetings all around.
At its core, the novel is about longing, loneliness, betrayal, family and forgiveness. Tony’s infidelity is painful for Eilis, but that hurt seems somehow secondary to the overriding loneliness Eilis experiences within her marriage to Tony. She is an Irish immigrant married into a robust Italian family. She is a also quiet, serious, introverted woman, awash in a sea of extroverted, boisterous and vivacious in-laws. Yet, Eilis’ return to Ireland, to the company of her mother and brother and her past love does not soothe her soul entirely, either. Eilis is mired in the contradictions and complexities of her life, which refuse to solve or simplify themselves.
Like many immigrants, Eilis dwells in the in-between. She toggles between her imperfect childhood and teenage past in Ireland and her imperfect adult life on Long Island. Neither home holds has a solution to her search for happiness, or even contentment. Choosing Ireland means separation from her children. Choosing Long Island means leaving behind her old and perhaps truest renewed love, at least for a time. Each choice is sullied. The Long Island choice includes living alongside her husband’s illegitimate child, a daily reminder of his betrayal. Choosing Ireland means living with the perhaps lesser deception that her lover engaged in, surrendering her work, her extended in-law family and the home she built. Nowhere is she complete.
Author Colm Toibin fashions a satisfying, ambiguous and open ending to this second Eilis Lacey novel. The reader can almost envision (and dares to anticipate) a third installment.
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