{"id":210216,"date":"2026-04-26T11:28:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T11:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/210216\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T11:28:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T11:28:30","slug":"colm-toibins-eilis-lacey-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/210216\/","title":{"rendered":"Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn’s ‘Eilis Lacey’ series"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn was first published in 1990, with his novel The South<\/a>. He published five novels thereafter, to great praise and awards buzz – but it wasn\u2019t until his 2009 novel Brooklyn<\/a> – that he reached global and resounding success; <\/p>\n

Young Eilis Lacey dreams of life beyond the confines of her tiny Irish village, but unlike her beautiful sister, Rose, Eilis\u2019 gifts are of a more practical nature: she has a head for numbers, and is a loving and dutiful daughter. Yet her ambition cannot be hidden and soon is noted by the Parish Priest, Father Flood. Via a church contact, he arranges for Eilis to travel to America where a job opportunity has arisen in New York with a reputable \u2018merchant of Italian origin\u2019. <\/p>\n

Eilis finds lodgings in an eccentric boarding house and ekes out an existence in the cosmopolitan melting pot that is 1950s Brooklyn, impressing her employer, outwitting her landlady, and even falling in love. It seems her dream is truly becoming a reality. But then fate intervenes: a family crisis back home forces Eilis to make a choice between the past and the future, the old world and the new. <\/p>\n

Told with a masterful and elegant simplicity, Brooklyn is a sublime Trans-Atlantic coming-of-age story by one of the UK\u2019s greatest living writers.<\/p>\n

The book was long-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Costa Novel Award 2009 – it was also an Oprah Book Club<\/a> pick that helped send it into the stratosphere. <\/p>\n

In 2015, the film was adapted by producers Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey of Wildgaze Films, with bestselling English author Nick Hornby adapting the screenplay. And the movie did extremely well according to Wikipedia<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Brooklyn received many nominations for industry and critics awards, including three nominations at the 88th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actress. Saoirse Ronan\u2019s performance was particularly praised, and, in addition to her Oscar nod, she garnered BAFTA, Critics\u2019 Choice, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations for Best Actress.<\/p>\n

\"Brooklyn<\/a><\/p>\n

I first read the book, because of the film – which I love so much. And it\u2019s a very faithful adaptation too, except for the ending \u2026 Nick Hornby gave the film a much more conventionally happy and romantic ending; of Eilis Lacey choosing her husband Tony in Brooklyn and a beautiful, light-filled closing scene and reunion between the two of them. There\u2019s a voiceover of Eilis speaking to another young Irish immigrant girl on the boat to Ellis Island, her voiceover carries us through the final, light-filled and romantic scene too; <\/p>\n

You have to think like an American. You\u2019ll feel so homesick that you\u2019ll want to die, and there\u2019s nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won\u2019t kill you. And one day the sun will come out – you might not even notice straight away, it\u2019ll be that faint. And then you\u2019ll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who\u2019s only yours. And you\u2019ll realize… that this is where your life is.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s really beautiful, and part of the reason Brooklyn was one of those adaptations, that – for a long time – I\u2019d say I slightly preferred the film to the book, precisely for that lovely finality. <\/p>\n

But truth be told; the ending is more Nick Hornby than Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn. And recently in revisiting Brooklyn – and its 15-years in the making sequel, Long Island – by listening to the audiobooks, I\u2019ve decided that I prefer T\u00f3ib\u00edn endings and ambiguities, that I in fact believe they are intrinsic to his themes and messages.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say I don\u2019t still love Brooklyn, the movie. And I am a fan of screenwriter (and author), Nick Hornby (Funny Girl<\/a> is one of my recent faves, of his). He\u2019s had a wonderful career script-writing alongside book-writing, and with a particular talent blending his careers; adapting books to film (An Education<\/a> based on Lynn Barber\u2019s book, and the year before Brooklyn came out – in 2014 – he wrote the screenplay adaptation of Cheryl Strayed\u2019s Wild<\/a>). <\/p>\n

In 2015 as part of promotion for the film, Hornby was interviewed by The Guardian<\/a> and partly revealed why he tweaked the ending; <\/p>\n

Is adapting from a novel you did not write like picking up a foreign language \u2013 do you try to catch the tone of the book? <\/p>\n

Brooklyn and Wild spoke to a readership. There is no point alienating that readership just because you have seen something in the book that could make a movie. It is too disappointing for people. Brooklyn is a beautiful, literary novel but we had to amplify it because its feelings and gestures are so understated. Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn sees to it that the reader has to make up his or her own mind about what happened.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly it \u2026 in Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s Brooklyn we never see Eilis return to America. We get the scene of Miss Kelly telling her she knows of her Italian husband back in Brooklyn, and how she intends to tell Jim Farrell and his mother what she\u2019s done in trapping and manipulating him. The choice is made for Eilis, and while she comes clean to her own mother – and writes a letter of goodbye for Jim – Eilis merely slips out in the middle of the night, into a waiting taxi to begin her long journey back to America. Not because she\u2019s chosen this path for herself with gusto and heart – the way Saoirse Ronan plays it in the film – but because someone else chose for her, Miss Kelly\u2019s scheming forces her hand. It is very much up to the reader if Eilis is happy or compromised in her choice. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an ending indicative and full-circle to Eilis\u2019s entire journey \u2026 in which her mother and her older sister Rose, begin the book by already deciding that she is the one to leave their small Irish town of Enniscorthy, and try for a bigger and better life in New York. <\/p>\n

To some extent, Eilis doesn\u2019t even really choose Tony – her husband – he picks her out at an Irish dance that he\u2019s infiltrated as a young Italian-American man because he has a thing for Irish girls. For a lot of their courtship Tony just makes himself available and in proximity to Eilis who eventually relents and finds some comfort from her homesickness in the distraction he presents \u2026 when Rose dies and Eilis plans to return home, it\u2019s Tony cajoling her into marriage before she leaves to ensure she returns to him. <\/p>\n

Even when Eilis is back in Enniscorthy and has the beginnings of a romance with local man Jim Farrell, it\u2019s him assuming that they\u2019re engaged-to-be-engaged as opposed to Eilis throwing herself bodily and wholly into the relationship \u2026 he doesn\u2019t consult her, just begins talking so as to make clear he assumes they\u2019re on their way to engagement. <\/p>\n

It makes sense for a filmic adaptation that Eilis finally make her own decisions in the finale – and chooses Tony and America. But the book has no such need or desire to appease movie-goers, and T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s leaving Eilis still unable to choose the path that is already laid out for her, is profound and feels true of the 1950s era. <\/p>\n

I decided to revisit T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s Eilis Lacey series, precisely because in 2024 he decided to – after 15-years – revisit the world and character that made him a superstar author, by writing his first ever sequel. <\/p>\n

But I decided to revisit via audiobook listening; <\/p>\n

In 2024<\/a> Saoirse Ronan came back to the character and recorded the new audiobook of Brooklyn<\/p>\n

Also in 2024<\/a>, Jessie Buckley was announced as the narrator of Long Island audiobook <\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting that Ronan wasn\u2019t tapped to narrate both audiobooks – but I actually think it\u2019s genius casting, to signal that 20-years have past. Ronan is 32 to Buckley\u2019s 36 – but where Ronan\u2019s Irish lilt is light and perfectly suits Eilis at 19 (and is intrinsically tied to the movie adaptation too, of course), Buckley\u2019s voice is deeper and brings that sense of age and wisdom to a woman now in her 40s. There\u2019s a grit and growl to Buckley, that perfectly suits the narrative leap between the two stories also \u2026<\/p>\n

\"Saoirse<\/a><\/p>\n

I know of so many people (myself included) who were totally blindsided by the premise of Long Island<\/a>; <\/p>\n

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighbouring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony\u2019s parents. 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. <\/p>\n

One day, an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony\u2019s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but will leave it with her. Eilis has choices to make, and what she does in the wake of this shattering news is at the heart of one of T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s most riveting and emotional novels to date.<\/p>\n

Yes, the catalyst for the novel – right there in the blurb and opening chapter – is that Tony cheats on Eilis, and gets a married woman pregnant \u2026 this woman\u2019s husband comes to the door and tells Eilis that when the baby is born, he will bring it to Tony\u2019s house to deal with. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big and cataclysmic thunderclap start to the novel, and maybe especially because of Hornby\u2019s romantic ending to Brooklyn, the film – one that shook fans. <\/p>\n

But T\u00f3ib\u00edn was asked about this plot-device, and gives a very brilliant answer in a 2024 interview with America Magazine; <\/p>\n

Do you feel any of the characters have changed in significant ways since Brooklyn? If so, which ones? <\/p>\n

With Tony, a lot of readers have come up with one way of looking at this. They believe the novel makes clear what a beast Tony is. This is not how I see things. These things happen and they\u2019re not ideal, but it\u2019s not as if Eilis is suddenly living with this monstrous figure. Some readers don\u2019t buy this. Some readers think it\u2019s horrible, it\u2019s disappointing, and how could you do this?<\/p>\n

The flippant answer is that God made adultery so we could have novels. This is one of the things the world knows, and if it\u2019s in the world, it\u2019s part of creation. It\u2019s not as though I have decided to bring this into the world.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think Tony changes. This is one of those things that gives rise to the drama of the novel. Without it, there is no novel. I get quite a lot of emails about this through my website. Readers are so upset.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod made adultery so we could have novels,\u201d is a perfect answer and if it has indeed elicited such a reaction from readers then it worked as a cataclysm in Eilis\u2019s life – and one that sends her back to Ireland for the first time in two-decades. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting – again – that had Hornby not tinkered so romantically with the ending of Brooklyn, it\u2019s a development that actually perfectly fits with the arch to Eilis\u2019s life \u2026 once again; actions of other people are dictating her future and path, and all she can do is react and move. <\/p>\n

The other departure in Long Island is that we get multiple POVs – from Eilis, Jim Farrell, and her old friend (now widowed, and in a secret relationship with Jim) Nancy Sheridan. Again, Buckley\u2019s timbre perfectly suits and swaps between these two women and one man. <\/p>\n

I loved Long Island maybe even more than Brooklyn, and specifically for the things that other people hated about the novel. <\/p>\n

For one thing; I love that all these people are in their 40s, but messier than ever. Far more than they were in Brooklyn – with their adultery, love-affairs, heartbreaks and reignited passions. I love reading literature that affirms that; the older you get does not necessarily guarantee the getting of wisdom. Just the opposite. <\/p>\n

I also loved Long Island because I think it\u2019s Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn revealing this deep understanding he has, that your life can begin again at any age. Either because you will it so – choosing to leave your philandering husband – or because it\u2019s deeply unfair, and death makes a widow of you far too soon. I think T\u00f3ib\u00edn knows this – given that he is a prominent gay author, who has been in a relationship with Hedi El Kholti, a Moroccan-born editor and literary press publisher – and the relationship seems to have started around 2012, when T\u00f3ib\u00edn was 57-years-old. <\/p>\n

I also found Long Island to be a very funny novel – there were times when the Enniscorthy gossips had my toes-curling for their unintentional wrecking of secrets and relationships, and there was an Irish wedding scene in particular that had me in giggles, as I listened – equal parts mortifying and hilarious. <\/p>\n

I know the ending is highly controversial – maybe especially for those who cling to Hornby\u2019s decided finality interpretation of Brooklyn. But the ambiguity is actually in keeping with Brooklyn the book, and makes it a true duology book-ended. <\/p>\n

I also loved the ending of Long Island that has this feeling of \u2026 plates spinning in the air; that as we turn that final page, these characters have a propulsive nature to them – that their lives will continue, there is so much mess and heartache to unpick and while we won\u2019t be privy to it, it continues somewhere off the page. <\/p>\n

Yes, it does feel like we\u2019re missing two or ten more chapters. But in that open-end, these characters feel more alive than ever – even as all of them find themselves stuck in that thematic web that T\u00f3ib\u00edn loves to weave; that none of them are really getting much of a say in their lives. They\u2019re still reacting, and having paths chosen for them.<\/p>\n

Do I think there will be a third book in the Eilis Lacey series, concluding it as a trilogy? I don\u2019t know. I hope so! But part of me also hopes it takes years, just as it did between Brooklyn and Long Island. I see Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn is now in his 70s and not slowing down; and I\u2019d love him to leap ahead another 20-years and show that\u2019s as true for his characters as it is for him. <\/p>\n

And I think of that question that Jim asks Eilis, and never gets an answer to at the end of Long Island; <\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s one question I want to ask you,\u2019 he began.<\/p>\n

She looked up.<\/p>\n

\u2018Just one?\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u2018If the phone rang in your garage on Long Island one morning, or one day, and it was me and I was in New York, or was even closer, and I had come to see you, what would you do?\u2019 <\/p>\n

Indeed; what would Eilis Lacey do? A fascinating question across two books already, I\u2019d love it if T\u00f3ib\u00edn made it a hat-trick. <\/p>\n

\"Jessie<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn was first published in 1990, with his novel The South. He published five novels thereafter, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-210216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}