Colm Tóibín’s 'Long Island' Is a Sequel to 'Brooklyn'

Ties to Ireland figure prominently in the new novel.

By
Eve Glasberg
August 20, 2024

Colm Tóibín, Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities, has written Long Island, a sequel to his novel, Brooklyn, which features, once again, Eilis Lacey. Eilis is Irish, and married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island; a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976, and Eilis is now 40, with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, an Irishman comes to the door, asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child, and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it, but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. What Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this news is at the heart of Tóibín’s new novel.

He speaks with Columbia News about his new book, the process of revisiting his characters, and what lies ahead for him.

How did you know it was time to write a sequel to Brooklyn

I didn't know. But I think “know” is a key word. After Brooklyn, the reader knew or almost knew what would now transpire. There was nothing for me to do. I provided the clues, or a sort of blueprint, for the future, beyond the final pages of the novel. If the reader can imagine something, there is no need for you, as the writer, to write it.

But one day—I don't keep a diary, and so I don't know what day—a very powerful image came into my mind. Usually, it would dissolve as being too melodramatic, too arresting, too cheesy. But I had been thinking about plot in the novel, about action. And this image—the image that appears in the first two and a half pages of Long Island (a man comes to the door)—seemed to satisfy something I was brooding on: The need to stop writing novels with too much atmosphere and not enough structure. And so I wrote the first section of Long Island—this was during the pandemic—and then I left it for a year. And then I began to work.

Long Island by Columbia University Professor Colm Tóibín

What was it like to revisit your fictional characters, in this case, Eilis Lacey and her husband, Tony?

It was a problem. In ways, I needed to rebuild them as though from scratch. In other ways, they were doubly there—there in Brooklyn and there in the film of Brooklyn. The film was important in giving me a sense of what could be done with the character Jim Farrell in Ireland. I found the actor Domhnall Gleeson's portrayal of him very powerful.

How does inspiration arrive, in terms of what sort of book to write next?

Things happen gradually and then suddenly. An idea, whatever that is, arrives and lingers. But it must at some point move into rhythm. In other words, you must feel compelled to start writing. You can't, I think, just decide. It comes to you.

Plans for the rest of the year?  

Two long book reviews for the London Review of Books, both involving a lot of reading and then the work of structuring, putting form on the essay. I am still promoting Long Island—in France, Holland, Denmark, and Romania over the next few months, a few days in each place. I have a few short stories to finish, and I have a new novel hovering over me.

Any reading recommendations?

Michael Nott's biography of the English poet Thom Gunn—A Cool Queer Life.

What will you be teaching next year?

I’m not teaching at all in 2025. (Hoping to finish a book of stories and also a new novel.) But in spring 2026, I will be back, teaching Ulysses.