Long Island

For the first time in Russian: a new novel by contemporary classic Colm Tóibín, a titan of Irish and world literature, winner of many prestigious awards, and multiple Booker finalist; author of international bestsellers like “The Master” and “The Magician.” Fifteen years ago, his novel “Brooklyn”—a quiet odyssey of a young Irish woman, Eilis Lacey, who left her hometown Enniscorthy for New York—captured the hearts of readers around the world, and the film adaptation “Brooklyn,” directed by John Crowley from a screenplay by Tóibín and Nick Hornby, received three Oscars. But Eilis’s story wouldn’t let Tóibín go—and now, despite his dislike of sequels (“It would be a catastrophe if ‘Ulysses’ had a sequel…”), he returned to the heroine many have grown to love. So, after the events of “Brooklyn,” a quarter of a century has passed. Eilis is married to an Italian man, Tony Fiorello; they have two teenage children. They live on Long Island as part of Tony’s large clan, alongside Tony’s brothers’ families and his parents. One day, an unfamiliar Irishman appears at her doorstep and claims that Tony’s wife is pregnant with his child, and that he won’t leave any other man’s child at home—he will bring the child into the Fiorello family under their door, so let Tony and Eilis sort it out themselves. What Eilis decides— and what she doesn’t decide—will make “Long Island” ring with “the energy of unrealized lives, suppressed feelings…” (York Press).