Forlorn follow-ups to great novels are commonplace. Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman are examples. Colm Tóibín's latest novel, Long Island, however, is a triumph. It’s the sequel to the much-loved, Costa Award winning Brooklyn (2009), a novel about a young Irish woman who emigrates to the US in the 1950s.
Tóibín continues the story of Eilis Lacey, now in her 40s, living in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with her Italian-American husband, Tony Fiorello, and their two teenage children in the spring of 1976.
Twenty years have passed since Eilis left behind her lover, Jim Farrell, a bartender from Enniscorthy, to reunite with her secret husband in Brooklyn. She lives in a suburban cul-de-sac on Long Island, where Tony’s parents, brothers and their families are her neighbours. The overbearing in-laws, so close that they can practically see into her home, are stifling her. Constantly in and out of each other’s houses, they have compulsory large, loud family lunches every Sunday. In a world that she sometimes finds unbearable, however, she has managed to find some peace.
The story begins with Eilis discovering that Tony has been unfaithful. The scene is unforgettable. An aggressive Irishman arrives at her door to inform her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and intends to leave the baby on Eilis’s doorstep.
“‘You are the wife of the plumber?’
“Since the question sounded rude, she saw no reason to reply.
“‘He is good at his job, your husband. I’d say he’s in great demand.’
“The man stopped for a second, looking behind him to check no-one was listening.
“‘He fixed everything in our house,’ he went on, pointing a finger at her. ‘He even did a bit more than was in the estimate. Indeed, he came back regularly when he knew that the woman of the house would be there and I would not. And his plumbing is so good that she is to have a baby in August.’
“He stood back and smiled broadly at her expression of disbelief.
“‘That’s right. That’s why I’m here. And I can tell you for a fact that I am not the father. It had nothing to do with me. But I am married to the woman who is having this baby and if anyone thinks I am keeping an Italian plumber’s brat in my house and have my own children believe that it came into the world as decently as they did, they can have another think.’
“He pointed a finger at her again. ‘So as soon as this little bastard is born, I am transporting it here. And if you are not at home, then I will hand it to that other woman. And if there’s no-one at all in any of the houses you people own, I’ll leave it right here on your doorstep.’
“She’d known men like this in Ireland,” Tóibín writes. “Should one of them discover that their wife had been unfaithful and was pregnant as a result, they would not have the baby in the house.”
Everyone in the Fiorello family seems to know about the baby. Secret discussions take place and a decision is reached: Eilis’ mother-in-law, Francesca, plans to welcome and raise the baby next door. Her life shattered, her rage mounting, Eilis returns to Ireland to visit her darkly cunning mother, who will soon turn 80. Enigmatic as ever, her plans beyond are unknown, even to herself.
In provincial Enniscorthy little has changed. She finds Jim managing his late father’s pub; unbeknown to Eilis, and the town, he’s become involved with and plans to marry her widowed friend Nancy, who struggles to maintain the family chip shop and protect her business from abusive late-night revellers. Eilis herself appears different to her old friends: “‘Something had happened to her in America,’” Nancy says.
But secrets and lies can be kept for only so long, as Eilis knows only too well. In the lead-up to the dramatic denouement, the tension becomes unbearable. It’s agonisingly inevitable that things will explode and when they suddenly do the fallout is profound — even more so because of Tóibín’s quiet, restrained prose.
In his calm exploration of who has been most wronged in this marriage, of middle-aged regrets, of men and women who cannot speak for fear of losing everything, he has crafted a magnificent, devastating, work of art.
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