Long Island, by Colm Toibin.

 

            Colm Toibin’s lovely novel ‘Brooklyn’ was the setting for young Irishwoman Eilis Lacey’s liberating trip to the United States in the late 50’s, a trip which enabled her to have a new and completely different life from the predictable, safe but dull village existence she would have had in her county in Ireland with her boyfriend Jim, being a wife and mum like all of her friends.  Going to the States had changed that outcome, for she has met young Italian Tony Fiorello and they are both smitten.  Life is more than exciting – it’s wonderful!  And they are both going to live happily ever after.

            Twenty years later, the happily ever after has produced two teenagers, and the entire family – Tony’s parents and his brothers, plus wives and kids – have shifted from Brooklyn to a Long Island town, in a four-house cul-de-sac, almost like a compound, with everyone dropping in and out when they feel like it.  Which is a lot more often than Eilis would like, but she doesn’t really seem to have much say in the matter.  She is now in her 40’s and has come to the realisation that excitement and wonder have passed her by.

            Until she receives a visit one day from a stranger – an Irishman – who informs her that his wife is pregnant to her husband.  Tony is a plumber by trade and it appears that he added services to the job that were not normally required.  The betrayed husband tells Eilis that when the baby is born, he is bringing it to her to do with as she sees fit, but HE won’t be having it in the house.

  And neither will Eilis!

            She is appalled at her husband’s infidelity and it’s not long before the rest of the family knows about it too, but the worst thing – the worst thing! – is that her Mother-in-Law announces that she will raise the child, because it is a Fiorello, after all.  Eilis’s feelings and opinions are worth nothing in the face of family solidarity.  Which leaves Eilis little choice but to go back to Ireland ‘for an extended holiday’ for the first time in twenty years, ostensibly for her mother’s 80^th birthday, but to hide out and plan her next move.  And what sort of reception will she get back home, especially from her mother, her erstwhile best friend, and spurned boyfriend Jim?

            Colm Toibin has written another beautifully realised and poignant story of the different reactions to a massive lifestyle event, where no-one gets off scot-free.  There are many unanswered questions at novel’s end, which must mean there HAS to be a sequel – has to be, or the literary world will be in a very dark place!  SIX STARS    

 

The Trees, by Percival Everett.

 

            Southern trees bear strange fruit

            Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

            Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

            Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

 

The verses of the song above help Percival Everett walk the fine line between horror and satire with great success in this novel of the complicated revenge struck by Black people for the killing – mainly lynching – of Black people for more than a century.  His portrayal of the murders of the Good Ole Boys whose families were responsible for the lynching of 14 year-old Emmet Till in Mississippi back in the day is chilling, especially for the fact that each corpse had his testicles removed, clutched in the hand of a dead Black man, also at the crime scene.  The redneck local Sheriff assumes, as anyone would, that said Black man is the killer, even though he was shot in the back of the head:  murder/suicide.  Wrap this up, guys.

            Except that the killing doesn’t stop:  more bodies are found further afield, along with their presumed Black killer clutching testicles, causing the redneck Sheriff to suffer the indignity of having to accept assistance from two Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, followed by a frightening Black woman agent from the FBI – cain’t they even be left to clean up their own crap??  Apparently not.

            In fact, no-one can, for the country is in for a reckoning:  there have been so many hate crimes and racially based murders that Black spirits are not the only victims calling ghosts to Rise;  Asians are hearing the call of Genocide, too.  How will it all end, especially when the current leader in the White House (in this story Donald Trump) gets jammed under his desk and can’t get out, discovering wads of chewing gum stuck in his hair, a sure sign that his VP had been trying out the desk for size – while he was Making America Great Again!

            Mr Everett paints a frightening, shamefully true picture of the woeful state of race relations in America, overlaid with superb, satirical humour from  characters who speak truth in every sentence:   every country needs such a chronicler.  Even though the truth hurts and is frequently unpalatable, it’s always preferable to lies.  SIX STARS.