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Book Cover for: Long Island, Colm Toibin

Long Island

Colm Toibin

Reader Score

78%

78% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 15 reviews on

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The New York Times Best Seller
2024 The New York Times Best Seller
Oprah's Book Club
Included in
Oprah's Book Club
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WINNER OF THE PRIX FEMINA * "Stunning." --People * "Dazzling yet devastating...Tóibín is simply one of the world's best living literary writers." --The Boston Globe * "Momentous and hugely affecting." --The Wall Street Journal *

From the beloved, critically acclaimed, bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving novel featuring Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín's most popular work in twenty years.

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. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. 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 work 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. It is what Eilis does--and what she refuses to do--in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín's novel so riveting and suspenseful.

Long Island is a gorgeous story "about a woman thrashing against the constraints of fate" (Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air). It is "a wonder, rich with yearning and regret" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).

Book Details

  • Publisher: Scribner Book Company
  • Publish Date: May 7th, 2024
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.10in - 1.20in - 0.95lb
  • EAN: 9781476785110
  • Categories: LiteraryHistorical - GeneralFamily Life - General

About the Author

Toibin, Colm: - Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah's Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022-2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.

Critics’ reviews