Oprah's Book Club: 'Long Island' by Colm Tóibín

What is Oprah's Book Club pick Long Island about?

Long Island picks up the story of Eilis Lacey, the Irish immigrant heroine of Tóibín's beloved 2009 novel Brooklyn. Now living on Long Island with her husband Tony and their children, Eilis's carefully constructed life is shattered when a stranger arrives at her door with devastating news. The novel is a meditation on identity, belonging, marriage, and the roads not taken.

Tóibín writes with his signature restrained, luminous prose — every sentence feels considered, every silence speaks volumes. Where Brooklyn was about the courage it takes to leave, Long Island is about the cost of staying, and the ways in which the past refuses to remain buried. Oprah's selection of this novel signals exactly the kind of emotionally resonant, beautifully crafted literary fiction her book club has championed for decades.

Why did Oprah choose Long Island for her book club?

Oprah's Book Club has a long history of selecting novels that center women's inner lives, explore questions of identity and belonging, and provoke meaningful conversation. Long Island checks every one of those boxes. Oprah has described the novel as a book that made her hold her breath — a testament to Tóibín's ability to generate enormous emotional tension through understatement rather than melodrama.

The selection fits perfectly within the tradition of Oprah's picks, which you can explore in full on our Oprah's Book Club: The Complete List. From Anna Karenina to The Covenant of Water, Oprah has consistently gravitated toward novels that ask hard questions about love, sacrifice, and what it means to truly know yourself. Long Island is a worthy addition to that canon.

Do you need to read Brooklyn before Long Island?

You don't strictly need to read Brooklyn first, but it will significantly enrich your experience of Long Island. Tóibín provides enough context that new readers won't feel lost, but the emotional weight of Eilis's dilemma in Long Island lands much harder if you've witnessed her original choices in Brooklyn.

For book clubs, this actually creates a wonderful opportunity: consider making it a two-month event. Read Brooklyn one month, then Long Island the next. The contrast between the two novels — the hopeful young woman of the first book versus the complicated, middle-aged woman of the second — generates rich discussion on its own. If your club is looking for more pairing ideas, check out our Ultimate Book Club Reading List for 2026 for inspiration.

What makes Long Island a great book club book?

Long Island is an ideal book club selection for several reasons. First, it's genuinely divisive in the best possible way: readers feel strongly about the choices Eilis makes, and those feelings tend to split along fascinating lines that reflect readers' own values and life experiences. Second, Tóibín's sparse, understated prose invites interpretation — what does a character's silence mean? What is left unsaid? These are exactly the kinds of questions that fuel lively discussion.

Key themes to explore with your club

• Identity and belonging: Is Eilis truly American, truly Irish, or something in between? Does she ever fully belong anywhere?
• The choices we don't make: The novel is haunted by roads not taken. How do your members relate to that feeling?
• Marriage and honesty: Tóibín raises uncomfortable questions about what spouses owe each other. Expect spirited debate.
• Motherhood and selfhood: How does Eilis's identity as a mother shape — and sometimes constrain — her sense of self?
• Return and nostalgia: When Eilis returns to Ireland, the country has changed. Can you ever truly go home?

If you want ready-made prompts to take your discussion even deeper, our Book Club Discussion Questions Generator can help you craft tailored questions for Long Island and any other book on your list.

How does Long Island compare to other recent Oprah picks?

Long Island sits comfortably alongside some of Oprah's most celebrated literary fiction selections. Like Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, it's a serious, ambitious novel that rewards patient, attentive reading. Unlike some of Oprah's more plot-driven picks, Long Island is almost entirely character-driven — those who love sweeping narratives with big dramatic events may find its quietness a challenge, while readers who prize psychological depth will find it revelatory.

For clubs who want to continue in this vein, our guide to the Top 25 Book Club Books of 2026 highlights a number of similarly literary, conversation-sparking titles. And if your group includes readers with very different tastes, the Best Book Club Picks for Every Type of Reader can help you find common ground.

How should you host a Long Island book club meeting?

Given the novel's Irish and Long Island settings, there's wonderful potential to create an immersive atmosphere for your meeting. Think about leaning into the novel's themes of home, displacement, and comfort food — both Irish and Italian-American cooking feature heavily in the world Tóibín creates.

Setting the scene

Consider a simple, warm aesthetic: candles, a linen tablecloth, and perhaps some Irish soda bread or Italian pastries as a nod to the novel's two cultural worlds. Our post on Book Club Table: How to Set the Perfect Scene has beautiful, practical ideas for creating an atmosphere that matches the mood of whatever you're reading.

Discussion warm-up ideas

Start your meeting with a simple icebreaker: ask each member to share one moment in the novel that made them feel a strong emotion — whether that's sadness, frustration, recognition, or hope. Tóibín's novel is full of such moments, and this exercise quickly reveals how differently readers experience the same quiet scenes. From there, you can move naturally into the bigger thematic questions.

For even more structured meeting ideas, our post on 20 Book Club Ideas That Will Get the Conversation Started is full of creative prompts that work especially well for literary fiction.

Who will love Long Island — and who might not?

You'll probably love it if: You appreciated Brooklyn, you enjoy quiet, psychologically complex literary fiction, you're drawn to questions about women's autonomy and identity, or you're a fan of writers like Anne Enright, Alice Munro, or Elizabeth Strout.

You might struggle with it if: You prefer fast-paced plots, you haven't read Brooklyn and don't connect with Eilis immediately, or you find Tóibín's deliberately restrained emotional register frustrating rather than evocative.

Either way, it's a book that almost guarantees a great discussion — even readers who feel ambivalent about Eilis tend to have strong opinions about her, which is exactly what you want from a book club pick.

What are readers saying about Long Island?

Reader response to Long Island has been passionate and divided in all the best ways. Goodreads reviews frequently describe it as heartbreaking, luminous, and quietly devastating. Many readers find Eilis's passivity infuriating — a reaction Tóibín seems to court deliberately, as a way of forcing readers to examine their own assumptions about what women should do and feel. Others find her entirely sympathetic, a woman doing her best in an impossible situation. That tension is the novel's greatest gift to book clubs.

Critical reception has been similarly strong: the novel was longlisted and shortlisted for major literary prizes, and Tóibín's return to Eilis Lacey was widely hailed as one of the most anticipated literary events in recent memory.