![](https://pittsburghlectures.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/C_Toibin-scaled.jpg)
“She felt almost guilty that she had handed some of her grief to him, and then she felt close to him for his willingness to take it and hold it, in all its rawness, all its dark confusion.”
Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn
From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work twenty years later.
Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.
One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.
Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’ life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost.
Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.
“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
Books
Copies of Long Island are available to purchase from White Whale Bookstore. After the lecture, the author will sign books in the Music Hall Foyer.
![](https://pittsburghlectures.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Long-Island-hc-hires.jpg)
WHEN
September 16, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. ET
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
Unlock our lowest ticket prices with a full-season subscription.
In-person subscriptions include online access passes to all ten lectures ($200 value).
WHERE
Carnegie Music Hall (Oakland)
WATCH AT HOME
Your Online Access Pass includes a livestream of the lecture, as well as on-demand access during a viewing period of one week. The link to view the livestream will be sent to your email on the day of the program.
SUBSCRIBE ONLINE TO ALL TEN EVENINGS
Your Online Access Subscription includes a livestream of each lecture, as well as on-demand access during a viewing period of one week.