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Read the previous book, Brooklyn, or see the movie. That will set you up nicely for where this one starts. Brooklyn, the novel, is short, understated—in fact, it wasn’t until the end that I appreciated it fully. But Long Island? Not just the best of the two books, but a deeply felt surprise. I went into this not expecting much; in fact, I thought it would be a strained sequel. Wow, was I ever wrong! Long Island will make my top ten of the year. These characters do not go away when you close the last page. I’m hoping for a trilogy. But I am not going to give even circumspect clues about how Tóibín ends things. That in itself would be a spoiler.

Long Island takes place twenty years post-Brooklyn, sometime in the 1970s now, and Irish-born Eilis has two teenage children with her husband, Italian American born Tony Fiorello. Tony has made a mess of things just recently (all for the reader to discover in the first few pages), and it is practically impossible for Eilis to think peacefully on her own. She is surrounded here in a cul-de-sac by Tony’s family in several of the houses. Everyone in the family knows everyone’s business, it’s just too much for Eilis right now.

Eilis’s mother and a brother are in Ireland, and have never met her children. She resolves to return home for a long visit, stay several weeks (if not months) before her children fly up to accompany her for their first visit. Of course, there’s drama in the gossipy village of Enniscorthy where Eilis grew up, and ghosts from her past that are living, breathing individuals, are ready to haunt or heat up at every turn. Besides her difficult mother, there’s the man she left behind, Jim Farrell. He runs one of the most popular pubs in town. Has never married.

Most of the novel is set in Ireland, as we follow Eilis and her children. The pace is perfect, never ever a dull moment. The prose reads with the alacrity of a gazelle, sprinting freely, yet fully dimensional in details and the authenticity of human dilemma. It’s real, folks! It’s suspenseful and thrilling, and the stakes just get higher and tighter as the pages turn. Oh, those stakes---a few went almost straight through my heart and bled me out.

Don’t worry---there is nothing melodramatic about this novel—that’s just me with my heart in their teeth. It is just as restrained as it needs to be, while also being fulsome and forthright. You never know what will happen next. The riskier the conduct, the more your own heart will pump and panic in equal measure.

What you have and what you left behind rub up against each other, and Eilis is compelled by unfinished business back in Enniscorthy. Broken bonds lay open and exposed, the harm to all the characters gradually revealed. As Eilis appraises her life and considers her options, she fully grasps the urgency to go back to her past in order to secure her future.

I must add my awe at how Tóibín develops characters with such sublime attention to the minute contradictions in human behavior, and how our outward-facing temperament may be highly interpretive. For example, Jim acts like what we know as *the strong silent type.* Is that why he is fiercely selective with his words? Tentative with weighty actions? Guarded about his life? Well, as quiet and restrained as he is, there is more than one way to interpret his personal style and cautious choices. The ending will blow you away, and that’s all I will say about that.

The author effortlessly crafts his tale, and he never intrudes on the action. Tóibín’s cast run the show—they fluently forward the plot with palpable intimacy. And enigma. For all their transparency, the reader won’t easily pierce the inexorable. The author steps out and lets them at it.

Eilis—the entire cast-- continues to carry on in my life. I can’t let them go, they are flawed, unforgettable, human. Eilis especially is inscribed in my personal atlas of eternal literary characters. In the space where truth-in-fiction exists, Eilis Lacey will endure. The story’s spry, subtle, and scintillating style was brilliant. I want another sequel and I rarely say that!

Addendum: Norah Webster makes a cameo appearance. (Also the title of one of my favorite Tóibín novels.) Background color basically. But it made me think about the Lucy Barton/Olive Kitteridge-verse. Tóibín has well established the Eilis Lacy-verse, and I'm a fan of him continuing to explore these nervy characters in both Enniscorthy and Long Island.