Today, I embarked on a literary journey into the distinct world of Long Island, a novel by the acclaimed author Colm Toibin. This captivating narrative continues the life of Eilis Lacey, a beloved character from Toibin's celebrated work Brooklyn, but two decades have passed. Eilis, now in her forties, is married to Tony Fiorello, an Italian-American plumber, and they are raising two teenagers.
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by Colm Tóibín
Today, I embarked on a literary journey into the distinct world of Long Island, a novel by the acclaimed author Colm Toibin. This captivating narrative continues the life of Eilis Lacey, a beloved character from Toibin’s celebrated work Brooklyn, but two decades have passed. Eilis, now in her forties, is married to Tony Fiorello, an Italian-American plumber, and they are raising two teenagers.
The novel offers a fresh perspective on Eilis’s life, struggles, and journey of self-discovery. She lives with Tony’s large and loving extended family on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, which plays a significant role in the story. Though Eilis feels connected to her Irish roots, she has yet to return to Ireland in many years.
One fateful day, a visitor arrives unannounced at Eilis’s doorstep, bringing with him a life-altering revelation. He reveals that his wife is carrying Tony’s child and plans to leave the baby with Eilis once it’s born. This unexpected twist throws Eilis into a maelstrom of emotions and a labyrinthine decision-making process. As the emotional core of Toibin’s narrative, this journey of self-discovery and emotional upheaval is sure to hold readers spellbound.
‘Long Island‘ is a poignant exploration of unfulfilled desires and the enigmatic secrets that shape our lives. Eilis’s reticence speaks volumes, and Toibin masterfully gives voice to her concealed yearnings and profound connections. For instance, Eilis often finds herself lost in memories of her life in Ireland, particularly her relationship with her mother. Though unspoken, these recollections lay bare her profound yearning for her homeland and family. This evocative tale of love, longing, and the quest for self-discovery is bound to enthrall readers.
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with author Colm Toibin about his new novel Long Island.
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by Tana French
Today, I began reading “The Hunter: A Novel” by Tana French, often called the Queen of Irish crime fiction. The story takes place in a small village in the West of Ireland during a hot summer. Two men arrive, one returning home and the other seeking riches. However, one of them is also seeking death.
Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago police officer who moved to rural Ireland for a peaceful life. He has built a relationship with a local woman named Lena and has been mentoring Trey Reddy, a troubled teenager on a better path. But when Trey’s long-lost father returns, accompanied by an English millionaire and a plan to find gold in the townland, everything they have built is threatened. Cal and Lena are willing to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey is not interested in protection. What she wants is revenge.
This novel, written by the acclaimed author described by The New York Times as “in a class by herself,” tells a nuanced and atmospheric tale about what we are willing to do for our loved ones, what we will do for revenge, and what we may have to sacrifice when the two collide.
by Jennifer Egan
The Candy House: A Novel by Jennifer Egan focuses on a new technology that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—it has seduced multitudes. According to the NYTimes, “this is minimalist maximalism. As a widow, I live in a world of memories, but I would not want them shared as they are in The Candy House. “It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive.”
Of course, I am not able to access my unconscious memories. Albeit in an amateur way, I write down some of my memories as they remind me of the power of the love that Jan and I shared. For example, the essay when I met Jan rekindles the memory and attempts to tell the story the way it happened, not how some would like it to be remembered.
The Candy House is one of the NYTimes’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read two of them, The Furrows and Checkout 19. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the multitude of characters and was confused. By the novel’s middle, their interconnectedness helped me understand its real meaning. In the end, Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for authentic connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption. As a widow, authenticity Is what I need to heal.
The Candy House is the seventieth (70) book I have read this year.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview.
It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and “eluders” who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.
Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game. Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Sarah Winman
I began reading “Still Life,” a GMA Book Club pick by Sarah Winman. This captivating and bighearted novel weaves a rich tapestry of stories about people connected by love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E.M. Forster. Kristen V. Brown, in The Atlantic Magazine’s Culture Survey, describes “Still Life” as the best novel she has recently read and considers it the best nonfiction work.
In Tuscany in 1944, as Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of an abandoned villa. There, he encounters Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses’s life for the next four decades.
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parot—a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics—he carries his time in Italy. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate and returns to the Tuscan hills.
With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family and a deeply drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.
by Alyssa Cole
When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole is a novel where the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning.
Sydney Green is Brooklyn-born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. After all, their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become a conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
Having lived in Brooklyn and seen the impacts of gentrification, redlining, and other practices, I found this book one that I truly enjoyed. The book will provide a detailed history lesson if you are like Theo and have no thought of these issues.
I enjoyed the visit to Weeksville, as I have been there on several professional occasions. The history of that community needs to be told.
I recommend this book.
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by Quan Barry
When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry is a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia as a pair of estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. Since Jan died, I have been sharing her love and not looking for her, so this novel attracted me as it was a counter-narrative. Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something more significant?
When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is a stunningly far-flung examination of our struggle to retain our convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, as well as a meditation on accepting what is.
Although I know only a limited amount about Buddhism and even less about Mongolia, I found When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East a fascinating page-turner of a novel.
Coincidently, while en route to see Memorial, we stopped to eat at a Mexican-Peruvian restaurant on Tenth Avenue in NYC. On the television was a continuous loop of a travelogue on Mongolia.
I found several quotes that I have used in other posts already.
I plan to use others in future posts.
Love never dies, and this quote echoed my belief.
“Love is neither created nor destroyed. It exists at all times and in all dimensions. Love is not something we create—it is something that wells up in us, like sap in a tree. It is an element in the fabric of the universe. Even on that distant day when sentient beings no longer exist, Love carries on. Perhaps our personal relationship to Love is impermanent, but Love itself is not.”
I highly recommend When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama somewhere in the vast Mongolian landscape, the young monk Chuluun seeks the help of his identical twin, Mun, who was recognized as a reincarnation himself as a child but has since renounced their once shared monastic life.
Harking back to her vivid and magical first novel set in Vietnam, Quan Barry carries us across a landscape as unforgiving as it is beautiful and culturally varied, from the stark Gobi Desert to the ancient capital of Chinggis Khan. As their country stretches before them, questions of the immortal soul, along with more earthly matters of love, sex, and brotherhood, haunt the twins, who can hear each other’s thoughts.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Colin Barrett
Today, I started reading “Wild Houses: A Novel” by Colin Barrett and was impressed by the author’s ability to blend dark humor and intense emotions. Colin Barrett, the award-winning author of “Homesickness” and “Young Skins,” has crafted a debut novel that takes readers on a rollercoaster ride of crimes committed out of desperation, abandoned dreams, and small-town secrets that won’t stay hidden. The story is presented with a wry wit that adds to its appeal.
The story is set in the quaint town of Ballina, located in picturesque west Ireland, as it prepares for its biggest weekend of the year. The simmering feud between small-time dealer Cillian English and County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum, painting a vivid picture of the town’s underbelly.
The story’s protagonist, Dev, is a reclusive man unwillingly drawn into the Ferdias’ revenge fantasy when he answers the door and finds Doll, Cillian’s bruised, sullen teenage brother, in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. With the help of his dead mother’s dog, Dev is jostled by his nefarious cousins and is struck by spinning lights as he is goaded into their plan.
Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can’t shake the feeling that something terrible has happened to her boyfriend, Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night and plagued by ghosts, Nicky sets out to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.
“Wild Houses“ is a beautifully crafted and thrillingly told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence. It is the long-anticipated debut novel from award-winning and critically acclaimed short story writer Colin Barrett.
