LONG ISLAND by Colm Tóibín

You don’t have to have read Brooklyn to enjoy this novel, but it helps.  This novel takes place two decades later, and Eilis’s husband, Tony, has fathered a child with another woman.  That woman’s husband intends to leave the baby on Eilis’s doorstep after it is born.  Eilis is having none of it, vowing never to raise that child, and makes plans to visit Ireland for her mother’s 80^th birthday.  On her previous visit two decades ago, Eilis and Jim Farrell fell in love, but Eilis left abruptly because she was already secretly married to Tony.  Now the tables are turned, because Jim is secretly engaged to the widow Nancy Sheridan, Eilis’s former best friend, while Eilis’s marriage is on the rocks.  Talk about star-crossed lovers!  These two just cannot get their timing right, and their secrets are not helping, either.  All would be well with Eilis and Jim, but Nancy is the fly in the ointment who is already making big plans for after her wedding.  I enjoyed everything about this love triangle, or quadrangle maybe. I supposed the reader could choose to be on team Tony or team Jim, but there’s really no contest.  I would put Nancy in the role of villain, but she really isn’t, until she becomes aware that Jim and Eilis still have a thing for each other.  What I did not enjoy was how the plot eventually just fizzles.