Long Island: A Novel

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work twenty years later.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, 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, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her 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. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.

Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’ life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost.

COLM TÓIBÍN is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín is the current Laureate for Irish fiction.

ISBN: 9780771012297
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: April 01, 2025

INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • New York Times bestseller and Editor’s Choice • Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award • Named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, The Economist, The Times, The Irish Times, New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, the Globe and Mail, Kirkus Reviews, Time, and NPR • Named a Best Book of the Summer by The Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, and the Washington Post • One of the New Yorker's, Vulture's, Indigo’s Best Books of 2024 (So Far) • Named a Best Book to Read in May by Time and the Irish Examiner • A Winnipeg Free Press Best Fiction Book of 2024 • One of Indigo Top 100 Books of 2024 and Top 10 Best Historical Fiction Books of 2024 • One of Kobo CA's Best Historical Fiction Ebooks and Best Historical Fiction Audiobooks • Glamour's Best Books for Book Clubs if 2024 • Washington Post's Notable Works of 2024 and Top 10 Best Audiobooks of 2024 • A Waterstones Booksellers' Favourite Books of 2024 • Amazon Editor's Top 10 Favourite Books of 2024 • One of The Independent's Best Historical Fiction of 2024

"A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect."

—Kirkus Reviews

“A brilliant, compelling and utterly human story. . . . Long Island is at once about freedom, a longing for it and its costs, and the eventual responsibility that conditions and limits it. This decades-later sequel is a natural and fitting second act after Brooklyn.”

—Globe and Mail