richard_morrow 's review for:

Long Island by Colm Tóibín

4.25

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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After over 20 years, Eilis comes home to Ireland. Enniscorthy has hardly changed yet the lives of all those Eilis left behind have changed greatly in the two decades since she was last there. 

We are introduced to a host of new characters including Eilis’s son and daughter while you also get to see how the lives of the people of Enniscorthy have changed since she emigrated from Ireland in the 1950s. Eilis’s return is met with everything from open arms to open hostility showing a great amount of character growth from the characters introduced in Brooklyn. 

Themes of second chances, heartbreak and homecoming are prevalent throughout the novel and how consequences from specific actions ripple across the entire community. I found Brooklyn to be an novel about America, while Long Island is very much a novel about what life was like in a rural Irish village and how, even though a place may stay the same on the surface, the feeling of home centres around the people who are there. 

A heartfelt, sad and realistic sequel focusing on the trials and tribulations of life, love and loneliness.