Long Island

Long Island by Colm Tóibín
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember being better satisfied with Brooklyn than my response to this one. Long Island continues the story of Eilis Lacey, the young woman in Brooklyn twenty years hence now married with two children and visiting her mother in Ireland. The writing is skillful if not demonstrating the beautiful language I am eager to underline or note. I felt that there was too much introspection on the part of the characters especially Nancy, her one-time best friend. After a bang up beginning on Long Island, the action and pacing are slow and deliberate which I guess is fitting for inhabitants of this small Irish town where most of the novel takes place. Each of the characters is somewhat calculating, Eilis in her strength and refusal to be pushed, and especially Jim and Nancy as they individually plot their relationship, him by omission, her by action. The only notation I made was the use of the word "remonstrate" at least twice in a few pages because I'd not heard anyone use it. The mother was well-drawn as were the other lesser characters. I didn't feel the passion of the key figures in this story, it seemed everyone was making do, or is that the author's comment on late life romance? The ending does not resolve these dilemmas for the reader so it appears Colm Tóibín plans a sequel.

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