April 10, 2025 by Micheley Kowalski

This week, we’re excited to recommend two books by Irish writer Colm Tóibín: Brooklyn and its sequel, Long Island, which was released 15 years later. 

Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis Lacey, who moves to New York City in the early 1950s as a young woman from small-town Ireland. Eilis is reluctantly carried to New York by the will of her family and the sponsorship of an Irish priest who can find her work, and not by a fully formed desire of her own. As Eilis adjusts to life in Brooklyn, she bumps up against and discards many of the social conventions and constraints that dictate life in Ireland, and eventually, she develops a relationship with a boy from a large, boisterous Italian family.

After tragedy unexpectedly calls her home, Eilis ultimately must decide: will she remain in a known way of life in Ireland, with its patterned hierarchies and strict social conventions, or will she return to Brooklyn and its more unpredictable future?

You may have seen the screen adaptation of Brooklyn, with the excellent Saoirse Ronan as the lead.

Released in 2024, Long Island picks up the story 20 years later. After a rupture in her marriage and two children, Eilis decides to return to Ireland for a summer. As Eilis returns to small-town life, with all its deeply embedded rules and roles, insiders and outsiders, we can see how these communities safeguard a certain way of life and punish those who disrupt the order of things. 

I read Brooklyn and listened to Long Island and both versions are excellent. Hearing the lilting Irish accent made Long Island even more meaningful, and I was captivated by the beautiful and quietly powerful writing. (At Dreamland, we listen to our books through the local library and their Libby app, or through Libro.fm, where a portion of each sale supports your local independent bookstore.)

As Seward locals, we can maybe understand the ways that small-town life can be equally supportive and confining. These two novels by Tóibín offer a poignant look into how to navigate one’s growth and authenticity amid confining convention. These novels never fall into self-pity; it is more about discovery and strength, and you’ll root for Eilis as she works through it all. 

I enjoyed these books one right after the other, and after finishing I marveled at how lives can remain unlived by repressing what needs to be said, and by not expressing what needs to be expressed. Tóibín is a master of revealing the quiet tragedy of a life lived in this way.