Elsewhere

Colm Tóibín's Wexford women and a reading update

Hallo, it’s me, Laura King. A few weeks have passed and I still haven't stopped thinking about how much I loved Long Island by Colm Tóibín, the sequel to Brooklyn set twenty years later: so much so that I’ve also been rereading Nora Webster, which is also set in Enniscorthy.  All three novels are beautifully written and are very special to me, as Tóibín, his characters and I all share a hometown.

I saw Tóbín interviewed by Belinda McKeon at ILFD, I think the day after Long Island was published. I attended the festival in Merrion Square on a lovely early summer evening, with a queue of six hundred people looping over and back outside the tent eager to get into the event. I can’t really do the really special atmosphere at the festival justice, so I’d urge you to read Claire Hennesey’s brilliant festival diary here (not only because there’s a reference to my reaction when Tóibín started slagging New Ross).  I took a lot of notes at the event, and on reading them back after finishing the book in question I was struck by how the idea of home, so central to this novel, is really interestingly counterbalanced with the characters’ needs to be elsewhere. This is even more pressing a theme in Brooklyn but is also shared by Nora Webster in her novel. 

I avoided Brooklyn for many years as thought it would be overly sentimental about Ireland's past and emigration and honestly, it kind of is but I over simplified it. When I saw the film I immediately fell in love with the story and read the book early the next morning, I believe in just a couple of sittings. Brooklyn is about Eilis Lacey, a young shop assistant in a small town who gets the chance to go to live in Brooklyn. She doesn’t want to leave her family, but her boss is a prize weapon and no boys will dance with her on the weekends, so she leaves for her great adventure, unsure if she will ever return. Things are hard in Brooklyn where she sticks out as a newbie even among the other Irish in New York, and the most heart wrenching scenes are her letters with her family. She returns to Enniscorthy in tragic circumstances during the novel and here we see the real push and pull in Eilis - back home to Enniscorthy, and the new prospects she now has since her return, or back to Brooklyn, where her totally new life and future is already mapped out for her. Eilis appears to the outside world and indeed to the reader as very solid, reserved, and steadfast but at her heart there is always this question over where she is at home, and the call of somewhere else where she might belong. 

When we return to Eilis so many years later, that part of her is no less apparent: though she has settled in Long Island among her husband's family, she is still out of place as an Irish American, writing home every month with pictures of her children and her new life. Her mother's 80th birthday provides the excuse she needs to go back to Ireland for the first time in twenty years, but she does so because her home in Long Island is suddenly and irrevocably disrupted following the distressing news that begins the book. Once home in Enniscorthy she is always thinking of her home in Long Island, and never at ease in any of these places. This book shares a point of view with her old best friend Nancy and the man she let down at the end of Brooklyn, Jim Farrell, and the lives they made as people who never left the town, but in their own ways now begin to imagine new homes and lives for themselves in middle age. 

(Interestingly, Tóibín credits Domhnall Gleeson's performance of Jim Farrell as inspiring in part Long Island, as the depth Gleeson brought to the role extended in Tóibín's mind to the years after Brooklyn takes place and allowed him to imagine him years later. As an unapologetic member of “Team Jim” you can imagine how vindicated I was by this, Jim getting point of view chapters, and even the thoughts of Eilis and Jim meeting years later had me kicking my feet with glee). 

For a book that is primarily about feelings, the “sequel”, as it were (Tóibín finds sequels cheap so he really made sure this one was worth it) is actually relatively pared back, with everything perfectly slotting together, every word considered and careful - and only deserving of Eilis, who's speech is as McKeon described "forensic". The writers spoke interestingly about how in Brooklyn, Eilis was already precise in her speech and her manner, rarely giving anything away, but as she has grown older we see she has learned how to choreograph every conversation cooly and always retain the upper hand. Still, I don't think anyone could describe the book as cool, though it may in its way be reserved, holding the true emotional impact to when it's really needed. McKeon said the experience of reading Long Island full of "rich, gossipy pleasure", from the small, perfect everyday details to the bigger more emotional moments too.

This pleasure in such a rich, emotional novel is shared in Nora Webster, which is about a woman reeling after her husband dies suddenly and she is left to raise their four children, wondering time and again how she will manage now, and what her future will look like. This is a sad book in many ways, but it’s lightened by some brilliant humour, usually directed at the busybodies who are a little too concerned with how Nora is getting on. The book begins with a visit from Eilis’ mother, and the families are tied by a seaside holiday home that Eilis seeks refuge at in Long Island. It's interesting reading Nora again after revisiting Eilis, as both are at fairly similar stages in their lives as mothers with almost-adult children, suddenly forced to change how they thought they would live the rest of their lives. 

While Eilis is caught between Enniscorthy and New York, Nora’s “elsewhere” is firmly in the past, when her husband Maurice was still alive. Both women are businesslike, capable, and loving though they play their cards somewhat to their chests - though Nora is very well able to hold her own and doesn't back down from an argument when one arises, whereas I think Eilis would maneuver herself out of one. Despite this pull to be elsewhere, and despite all this domestic disruption, both are very practical women who, while acknowledging the depth of their feelings have an inner strength or drive that propels them forward, allowing them to do the best they can for themselves and their families with what they have. 

These novels are a joy to read because they are so grounded in reality. It helps that I know the streets they walk through, detailed so carefully by Tóibín, but so many people from similar towns will recognise themselves and their communities too, from the nosiness and gossip the characters face at one turn, and the familiarity and support at others. Tóibín's writing could be easy to overlook in its simplicity, but his ability to take those everyday details and make them sing is a testament to how great a writer he is, and to his ability to really make us feel part of the world he has created.

Reading update

I'm scheduling this post on Friday, and at this point I’m almost finished a few books and am not sure what I’ll start next. Exciting!

Physical book: I'm almost finished What Walks These Halls by Amy Clarkin and I was finding reading these characters so comforting until a really freaky doll scene that has completely unsettled me.

E-reader: I think I may be giving up on The Pairing by Casey McQuiston - I'm sure it will be enjoyed by many readers, but I'm not sure what's in there for me. If I’m not stuck in by the end of the weekend, I’ll move on.

Audiobook: I'm also almost finished Nora Webster, and am loving Fiona Shaw’s narration, particularly at some of Tóibín’s more humorous scenes.

Short stories: I’m nearing the end of Quickly While They Still Have Horses by Jan Carson and there is almost too much to say and think about each of them - her best book yet. 

Thank you for reading, and I hope you join me next week for a new installment of LauraEatsBooks… Fangirl.