Long Island

In this wistful literary standalone set in the 1970s and 2024 Summer Reading Guide selection, Tóibín returns to his beloved character Eilis Lacey from his 2009 novel Brooklyn. Now in her forties with two teenage children, Irishwoman Eilis is still married to Tony, and still feels like an outsider amongst—and sometimes a prisoner in—his large Italian family. When a stranger appears at her door with a staggering revelation about her husband’s life and choices, Eilis finds herself at a crossroads in her life and marriage, and escapes from Long Island to her small Irish hometown after a decades-long absence to contemplate her future. The neighborhood dynamics are both utterly prosaic and heavy with meaning: this is the kind of book where a bit of gossip whispered by one neighbor to another makes you gasp aloud.