When an Irishman knocks on Eilis Fiorello's door on Long Island, the news he brings looks set to jeopardize the stability of the family life she and her husband Tony have built together. The arrival of this stranger will send Eilis back to Ireland and to the people she had left behind twenty years earlier. Did she make the wrong choice leaving? Is it too late now to take a different path?
About the Author
Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn and The Magician, and two collections of stories. Long Island was an immediate top ten bestseller in both Ireland and the UK on publication. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.
Industry Reviews
Praise for Long Island
'Wonderful' Elizabeth Strout
'Intensely moving' Douglas Stuart
'Magnificent' The Times
'The work of a writer at the height of his considerable powers, a story of ordinary lives that contains multitudes' The Guardian
'Eilis from Brooklyn is thoroughly grownup now. She's such a living creation: distinctive, guarded, forceful, watchful' The Observer
'Toibin dramatizes secrecy and its consequences better than almost any other contemporary novelist' The Sunday Times
'Colm Toibin's rich talents as a novelist need no further enumerating. You just have to read everything he writes' The New Statesman
'Heartbreaking, wistfulness, cracking dialogue . . . This is Toibin at his best' The Times
'In Long Island, Colm Toibin has finally given us a follow-up to Brooklyn . . . I read it in one sitting, thrilled to be back with the characters that captivated me last time' The Observer
'An entrancing follow-up to Brooklyn, a moving coming-of-age story and a portrait of the plucky immigrants who fuelled America's post-war boom' The Economist
'Somehow Toibin makes a book like this - sparely written, elliptical, ambiguous - as immersive as the richly
detailed biographical novels that he has written in recent years. He is a magician' TLS