Colm Tóibín
Tóibín, Colm "Long Island" - 2021
#6Degrees of Separation:
from Long Island (Goodreads) to Croatian War Nocturnal
#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.
The starter book this month is Long Island by Colm Tóibín.
The best way to deal with books that I haven't read is usually to go by words in the title. So it was this month. The starter word is Long.
As so often, I have not read this one and I doubt I am going to because I really didn't like the author's first book, "Brooklyn". So here is the description:
"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."
Ingalls Wilder, Laura "The Long Winter" in Little House Books" - 1932-71
Štimec, Spomenka "Croatian War Nocturnal" (Esperanto: Kroata Milita Noktlibro) - 1993
Both the first and last book are written by a young girl/woman and based on their life in harsh circumstances, none of which we would ever wish on a child nowadays but, unfortunately, there are still too many who have to live like that.
📚📚📚
I found comfort during the pandemic in reading Wilder's story of The Long Winter. Wilder's family and friends had no grocery service and they had no great way of heating their homes during the winter that she describes. Somehow it made the pandemic feel a little less daunting.
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