I didn’t read Tóibín’s Brooklyn before picking up Long Island which was a mistake, because apparently it helps a lot if you already know the characters, and people say Brooklyn is great. So there you go, don’t jump into Long Island unprepped, or you might, like me, find the story missing background depth. Like why did a woman like Eilis marry Tony (and his entire wrap-around Italian/American family) in the first place? And why was she so resigned when a stranger tells her that Tony-the-plumber had plumbed his wife, and he intended to deliver the baby to him when it was born? Interesting premise to begin a book, but what then?
It’s the mid 1970s in America and Irish Eilis doesn’t have a friend outside the family to talk to, and the family are inside everything. They live in a cul-de-sac that oozes with Tony’s family and in the time-honoured Italian way, everyone knows everyone’s secrets. Unfortunately, no one seems to call Tony out on screwing on the job. The question is never “how should Tony acknowledge the damage he has done and atone for his behaviour” but always “how do we get him off the hook?”. The only time Eilis seems to confront him about his infidelity he swears it was just once. And she believes this?
She does tell the family she will not so much as acknowledge the child – the initial expectation seems to be that she will raise it– but the family find a work around. Tony’s mum, who lives next door, will step in. Eilis goes on ‘holiday’ for her mum’s eightieth birthday in Ireland and the two kids follow soon after.
Then we go to the Irish story, where Eilis is no longer a milksop, but has a lovely engagement with her feisty mother. She buys her household appliances that her mother refuses to get plumbed in until they seem like her idea. In the middle of all this lovely Irishness there are a surprising number of people who realise that it is better to listen than to talk and who like long silences and will drive without speaking or who can’t find the words to express themselves. In Ireland? Into the mix of characters come Eilis’s erstwhile best friend, Nancy, who, now widowed, is secretly bonking Eilis’s erstwhile boyfriend, Jim, who I cannot imagine one woman, let alone two or three, getting excited about, or why the pair are so cloak and dagger about it and a lot of this harks back to Brooklyn I think, which brings me back to the start. If you want to enjoy this book, and it really might be very good, read the first one first so the characters have more depth. I don’t think I’ll rush out to read his others on the strength of this one.
Cristina Sanders' blog 