Long Island was published by Viking in 2024, a sequel to Brooklyn set twenty years later. Eilis Lacey — now Eilis Fiorello — is living in Lindenhurst, Long Island, in 1976. Her children are nearly grown. Her marriage to Tony is stable but routine. Then a man arrives at her door and tells her, without emotion, that his wife is pregnant and Tony is the father.
Eilis’s response is not rage but flight: she decides to return to Wexford for the summer, where Jim Farrell — the man who courted her during her visit home in Brooklyn, whose proposal she effectively fled from — is still unmarried. The novel alternates between Eilis on Long Island processing Tony’s betrayal and Jim in Wexford learning that Eilis is returning.
Toibin returns to the central question of Brooklyn: can you choose between two lives? In the earlier novel, Eilis chose Brooklyn. Now Brooklyn has betrayed her. But Wexford is not the Wexford of 1952 — Jim has built a life around her absence, and her return threatens to destroy what he has constructed.
Collecting Long Island
First edition (Viking, London, 2024): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $15–$30
- Signed first: $40–$80