Colm Tóibín does not approve of sequels. “It would have been a disaster if Pride and Prejudice had a sequel. It would have been a disaster if Ulysses had a sequel. Imagine!” the Irish novelist exclaims from his study in Columbia University, New York, where he teaches. “It ends with Molly Bloom asleep, then you’d suddenly realise, ‘Oh, my God, it’s starting another day.’”
Yet fans of Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn will be delighted to know that after a gap of nearly 15 years he has overcome these misgivings to write a follow-up, Long Island. Set in the 1950s, Brooklyn takes the fairytale of New York – an Irish girl who emigrates to America – and turns it into a heartbreaking story of homesickness and regret (it is a Colm Tóibín novel, after all). Adapted by Nick Hornby in 2015 into an award-winning film starring Saoirse Ronan, it is the best known and loved of Tóibín’s 10 novels. It also has one of the most agonisingly ambiguous endings in contemporary fiction, tweaked for a happy conclusion in the film. “I’ve been with these characters for a long time,” he says. “It’s strange how they don’t leave you.”
