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Long Island

An unputdownable, searing love story – the Sunday Times bestselling sequel to Brooklyn

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About this listen

Read by Golden Globe and Olivier Award winner, and Oscar nominee, Jessie Buckley (Hamnet, Wicked Little Letters), and featuring an exclusive audio Q&A.

'Heartbreak, wistfulness, cracking dialogue . . . This is Tóibín at his best' - The Times
'A masterful novel full of longing and regret . . . Intensely moving and yet full of restraint' - Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4

Long Island is Colm Tóibín’s masterpiece: an exquisite, exhilarating audiobook that asks whether it is possible to truly return to the past and renew the great love that seemed gone forever. The sequel to Colm Tóibín's prize-winning, bestselling novel Brooklyn.

A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn - perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future.

And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind.

Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?

 Best of 2024 City Life Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Urban World Literature Heartfelt

Critic reviews

Long Island is the best new novel I’ve read in years – and it’s as persuasive an argument in defence of the unique capability of the novel form as you could ever hope to find (Megan Nolan)
You don't have to have read Brooklyn to enjoy the many pleasures of Long Island. It is a masterful novel full of longing and regret. A tale of lovers reconnecting, of compromise, and the settling that can come later in life. Intensely moving and yet full of restraint, I was sad to turn the final page (Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain )
A brilliant novel . . . it is beautifully crafted and makes for a riveting, wonderful read (Elizabeth Strout)
Heartbreak, wistfulness, cracking dialogue . . . This is Tóibín at his best (Robbie Millen)
Morally and pscyhologically meaty . . . Engrossing, truthful and humane, [Long Island] is a magnificent achievement (Johanna Thomas-Corr)
His best yet . . . It reads like the tensest of stage plays, but with all the pleasures of interiority that the novel form allows. I haven't wanted to hug this many characters in a while (Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times and The Happy Couple )
A masterful and uproariously entertaining book, glittering with all of Toibin's intelligence and humane wit, as compelling, passionate and quietly enigmatic as its unforgettable protagonist Eilis Lacey (Colin Barrett, author of Wild Houses)
Tóibín is the consummate cartographer of the private self, summoning with restrained acuity (and a delicious streak of sly humour) the thoughts his characters struggle to find words for . . . [Long Island is] the work of a writer at the height of his considerable powers, a story of ordinary lives that contains multitudes. (Clare Clark)
Colm Tóibín's heartrending follow-up to his beloved 2009 novel, Brooklyn, is the rare instance in which a sequel is every bit as good as the original
Exquisitely drawn
Brooklyn and Long Island . . . capture the decency and ordinariness of the characters as well as the deep emotional ruptures that drive them toward disorder. The confrontations between these people, so long delayed, feel momentous and hugely affecting. These pendant novels, I think, will be the fiction for which this wonderful writer is best remembered.
Tóibín [is] a master of his art . . . exquisite
Compellingly readable, carefully constructed, and beautifully written. Once you start, you'll be hooked
There are few authors more attuned to human yearning . . . a wistful novel, heavy with longing . . . [with] a tension to rival any thriller . . . a sequel that more than earns its place
All stars
Most relevant
This was a marvellously rich and absorbing story. Full of diverse and believable characters whose lives dissect, transform and alter the course of others around them.
The narration was so perfect! The characters came alive through the mastery of the various accents and the capturing of individual personalities. The pace was also perfect and I felt I was really there alongside every character as they appeared.

A huge thank you to the author and narrator for such mastery. Outstanding!

A rich, absorbing and memorable story.

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My first book of this author and this is a stand alone novel. The fragility of human relationships is so familiar, it’s unnerving and intimate. The locations are characters in themselves. This audible is fluid and a sensory overload, it is now imprinted into my being.

Intimate

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Great story so well read and kept me suspended and I felt like I was in Ireland

Loved it

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The narration of this wonderful novel is absolutely superb.Jessie Buckley seems effortlessly to move from character to character and the listener knows immediately who is talking.My favourite was Mrs Lacey as she reminded me of my Irish grandmother.

Brilliant novel and narration

A triumph for Jessie Buckley

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I had been looking forward to this .. but Jessie Buckleys performance was just magnificent. She portrayed every character with such intimacy and just the right accent and intensity and intonation. In the last sentences the emotion in her voice was extraordinary . She did justice to this wonderful novel .

Superlative performance

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