Long Island
Colm Toibin
(Author)
Description
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * Named a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Good Housekeeping, AARP, and more. From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín's most popular work twenty years later. Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony's parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony's child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis's doorstep. It is what Eilis does--and what she refuses to do--in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín's novel so riveting. Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis' life are thunderous and dangerous, and there's no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she'd lost.
Product Details
Price
$28.00
$26.04
Publisher
Scribner Book Company
Publish Date
May 07, 2024
Pages
304
Dimensions
6.1 X 9.0 X 1.2 inches | 0.95 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781476785110
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About the Author
Colm Tóibín is a renowned Irish novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright, professor, and literary critic. He is the author of ten novels, including Long Island; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award and adapted for the BAFTA award-winning film of the same name; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections, several books of criticism, and a collection of poems, Vinegar Hill. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named the 2022-2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York City.
Reviews
Praise for Long Island "Momentous and hugely affecting. These pendant novels, will be the fiction for which this wonderful writer is best remembered." --Wall Street Journal "Rich and doubly suspenseful... Tóibín, a master of his art, exploits to exquisite effect at the end, leaving us to wonder, yet again, what's next." --Los Angeles Times "Dazzling yet devastating... Tóibín is simply one of the world's best living literary writers..." --The Boston Globe "About secrets and dreams and the conflict of desire over duty... Long Island is a wonder, rich with yearning and regret." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "Tóibín's storytelling is rich and full of tension as he explores the complexities of life, the decisions we make, and the consequences that result." --Glamour "Fifteen years ago, Colm Tóibín won readers' hearts with his best-selling novel Brooklyn. Now, with the sequel, Long Island, he just might break them... Tóibín writes beautifully about the struggle between the comfort of the familiar and the hope for something better." --Columbia Magazine "Tóibín's latest sees the return of one of his most beloved heroines from his novel Brooklyn and deftly explores the longings of a woman who finds herself alone in her tilted marriage." --The Chicago Review of Books "A close observer of human nature, Tóibín writes with great depth of longing... Often it is what is unsaid, contained in the pauses, that grips the reader's attention. There is plenty of beauty to savor." --BookPage "Quietly devastating... Tóibín is brilliant at tallying the weight of what goes unsaid between people... Tóibín's mastery is on full display here." --Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW "Tóibín writes with unparalleled fluidity and grace. Each character is intricately drawn with psychological acuity, emerging as fully, almost achingly human. Eilis is complicated, fearless, and compelling, much like her brilliant creator." --Booklist, STARRED review "Eilis' fate is determined in a plot twist worthy of Edith Wharton...the author is a master of quiet, restrained prose, calmly observing the mores and mindsets of provincial Ireland. A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect." --Kirkus, STARRED review
