“There is a lucid simplicity to everything Tóibín writes. Nothing is forced or overstated.
Sequels can be chancy things. Follow a character to the breathless end of their dramatic arc and you’re not always eager to meet them again. Colm Tóibín adroitly sidesteps this problem in by the simple expedient of letting time pass. We’ve been waiting 15 years to find out what happened to Eilis Lacey when she tore herself away from her home-town lover Jim Farrell in the final pages of and recrossed the Atlantic to her plumber husband Tony Fiorello.
