Submit your Article

Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, playwright, and poet. He has written 11 novels. I had previously read two books by Colm Tóibín, ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Nora Webster',  and I had loved them both. Brooklyn was a special read. I loved the protagonist and the setting was calming. The story wasn’t sad or happy. It was a mix of both, just like things usually are in real life. What I loved about the story was that relatability, of nothing being overly dramatic or downplayed for the sake of fiction. 

The stories, in both Brooklyn and Nora Webster, were nicely crafted and written, the characters were simple yet fascinating, and the author’s writing was almost conversational and smooth. I would read anything Tóibín wrote, which is why I was eager to read ‘Long Island’ when I heard it was coming out. I was even more excited when I found out that it was actually a sequel to Brooklyn. 

Set in the 1950s in Ireland, Brooklyn follows Eilis Lacey after she returns to her hometown Enniscorthy in southeast Ireland for a funeral. She has secretly gotten married in America but still has a fling of sorts with a local named Jim Farrell. But Brooklyn wasn’t a story of deception or infidelity. It was about a woman trying to find herself in a world where her identity is always associated with someone else. 

Long Island follows Eilis almost 20 years later, in the 1970s. Once again, she’s chosen to return to her hometown to attend her mother’s 80th birthday and finds herself confronted by unresolved issues and ghosts of the past. This time she’s home because her husband cheated on her and she’s lost her footing and feels unsettled. She meets Jim, the man she had once had an affair with, and they sort of rekindle their romance. However, Jim was all set to get married to Nancy, who at one time used to be Eilis’s best friend, right before Eilis returned to Ireland. 

The plot might sound morose and even annoying to some. A few colleagues I was talking to said they would never want to read something that almost justified cheating and polygamous relationships. But Long Island, though dark and brooding, is an exploration of the complexities of marriage, being a woman, and fitting in. The story is narrated by Nancy, Eilis, and Jim and as you take turns getting into the character’s shoes and head, you begin to understand their motivations and see things from different perspectives. 

You don’t have to have read Brooklyn to read Long Island. Both of these books work really well as standalone novels. But together they are a masterclass in good writing and storytelling. Of late, I’ve been enjoying stories that don’t wrap up neatly in the end, allowing me to draw my own conclusions. Long Island’s ending is also open to interpretation. This isn’t a spoiler because you get a sense of how it’s going to end all throughout the novel. You know someone or the other will be hurt and that people aren’t going to always get what they want. The joy of the novel is in getting to know its characters, the main ones as well as the minor ones, as the author has written them with love, care, and a good sprinkling of humor.

Long Island

Colm Tóibín 

Published: 2024

Publisher: Picador

Pages: 287, Paperback

Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel ‘Headshot’ was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2024 as well as the Center for Fiction Best Debut. It also made it to Barack Obama’s 2024 Summer Reading List. Bullwinkel’s writing has gotten her many accolades. Her short story collection ‘Belly Up’ won a 2022 Whiting Award. Her writings have been featured in various publications. She is the Assistant Professor of English at University of San Francisco in the US. 

Headshot is the story of eight teenage girl boxers. The story is narrated in a series of face-offs during a championship tournament. I hadn’t read anything like it before. The concept was new and refreshing and Bullwinkel keeps the story tight and action packed. As the girls box and compete, you get to know their stories—their past and their hopes for the future, their weaknesses and strengths, what drives them and what makes them tick, and the many characteristics that make them unique. Each girl has her own baggage and hang ups and they are all fighting their own battles, whether it is with themselves or within their families. 

The characters are complex and compelling. There’s Artemis Victor who thinks she’s the prettiest girl in the tournament but who will, even if she wins, always be second best to her sister. Her opponent Andy Taylor is haunted by the image of her father’s dead body. Without him, she needs someone to rely on. Rachel Doricko wears a strange hat and likes to intimidate people. Kate Heffer, on the other hand, is governed by plans and rules and thinks it is what will help her achieve success in life. Izzy and Iggy Lang are cousins. While Iggy has been inspired by Izzy to take up boxing, Izzy doesn’t understand why her annoying cousin would want to copy her. 

The narrative isn’t linear, hopping between the past, present, and the future, and the characters make frequent appearances which allows you to get to know them better. A commonality among the characters is that these are all teenage girls on the cusp of adulthood and they all belong to working class families. The author shows their struggles of trying to break free from whatever holds them back as well as their hopes for the future. I was invested in the story as I wanted to know what became of these girls after the tournament. Headshot isn’t a big book but it’s so nicely written and structured that the story feels complete. 

Bullwinkel has an eye for details and that makes the scenes come alive. I felt like I was watching a match while it happened and the girls were right there in front of my eyes. Even their thoughts and emotions were so beautifully described that I was totally consumed by these characters. The story also anticipates how the girl’s lives will pan out when they stop competing and whether they will even forge a career in boxing. In that way, it also examines what it means to be a sportsperson and how it defines their life. I was especially enthralled by the writing and found myself reading certain passages over and over again. 

The book isn’t that long but there’s a lot to unpack in the story. You might be able to resonate with a character or two or find that you identify with certain traits in different girls. It calls for a lot of introspection and that is what made Headshot an important read for me. I would recommend it to anyone looking for something new and immersive. You won’t be disappointed. 

Headshot

Rita Bullwinkel

Published: 2024

Publisher: Daunt Books 

Pages: 248, Paperback

Colm Toibin, one of my favorite writers, called ‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan the best novel he read in the year it was published. The book was shortlisted for the booker prize in 2022. Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club in 2024. The book is short, at just a little over a hundred pages, but packs a punch. Even Oprah, in one of the videos on the book club’s Instagram page, says you’ll be thinking about it long after you’ve turned the final page.

The book is dedicated to the women and children forced to work at the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. Built to house women who had ‘fallen from grace’ but promoted cheap labor, Magdalene Laundries were stricter than prisons. Women had to work without pay and were only provided a meager meal at best. Their living conditions were horrifying, with many being forced to eat off the floor or sleep in dank places. In Ireland, the last Magdalene Laundry ceased operating only in 1996.

Set in Ireland in 1985, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong, a coal and timber delivery man, as he makes a shocking discovery that will change the course of his life. He’s living a content life with his wife and daughters when he stumbles upon something that involves the church. Bill doesn’t know how to deal with it and despite his wife’s insistence that he look the other way, he can’t help but get involved in it. The book is alternately slow and fast. What I mean by that is there’s a leisurely pace to life in the book but things unravel quickly once Bill discovers the town’s well-kept secret. 

Bill’s life hasn’t been easy. He doesn’t know who his father is and his mother dies when he’s just a child. But all his life he has been shown kindness by strangers who took him in and nurtured him. In a way, he’s come to associate love with kindness. Isn’t what you know of love and how you perceive love shaped by how you were loved while growing up? Bill has received kindness and it’s the only way he knows how to be. This dictates his actions and he can’t turn away when he feels someone needs his help. This might mean giving beggars all the change in his pockets or rescuing someone in trouble.

Despite the brevity, you feel like you really get to know the characters. I can’t fathom how Keegan has been able to achieve that but you come to care about the people in the story. Perhaps that is because Keegan taps into their vulnerabilities and shows you it’s possible to maintain grace under pressure. Bill is a man with a clear conscience and he does his best to live by certain principles. He’s a good husband and a caring father. When things go wrong, he doesn’t buckle. His goodness forces him to stand his ground and do what he thinks is right despite knowing it might be a hard battle. 

I read Small Things Like These in under two hours. It was so engrossing that I wasn’t able to put it down. It’s sad, horrifying, and strangely uplifting at the same time. It shows you what humans are capable of and that cruelty and kindness co-exist in the world and that it’s never one or the other but a mix of both. This is a book you’ll want to buy a few copies of, one to keep and the others to give to family and friends.

About the author

Claire Keegan is an Irish author who is known for her short stories and novellas. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Paris Review among others. Two of her novellas have been made into movies. Small Things Like These has been adapted into a film starring Cilian Murphy and Emily Watson. She has received several awards including The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, The Martin Healy Prize, and The Olive Cook award.

Fiction

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan

Published: 2021

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Pages: 110, Paperback

If I see a book of short stories by an author I haven’t read, I will definitely buy it. I won’t even have to read the blurb to decide. I just know I will enjoy it. And I’ve hardly ever been wrong. Even if I don’t like all the stories in a particular collection, I will enjoy a few and that will be enough for me to recommend the book to others. The same goes for my recent read ‘Dead-End Memories’ by Banana Yoshimoto. The book has five stories and I more or less like them all. 

Translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda, the writing was refreshing. Perhaps it was because I had never read both the author and the translator before. But I enjoyed every bit of it. The stories were beautiful and nostalgic. I could see me and my friends in the characters. All the stories are about women who, after some painful events in their lives, find comfort in small moments of everyday life. 

I was intrigued by the author’s name and I found out that Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of the author Mahoko Yoshimoto whose father is a famous poet in Japan. She is the prize winning and internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction like ‘Kitchen’, ‘Asleep’ and ‘The Premonition’. In Dead-End Memories, Yoshimoto delves into the lives of women who are grappling with some sort of a transition in their lives. There’s a melancholic undertone to the stories but there’s a fair bit of drama too to keep things interesting. 

The women in the stories discover their strengths and weaknesses through varied experiences in their lives. A woman’s romantic life is shaped by the ghosts of a couple who live in the house of her lover. A hard-working editor has a near death experience that completely changes the course of her life—She’s poisoned at work and that changes her relationship with work and her co-workers. Though the stories involve romance, they aren’t centered on it. There’s also a recurring theme of food in the stories despite the stories never overlapping. It made me realize how much of our memories are shaped by the smell and taste of what we eat. 

Despite being short, I found myself taking time with the book as the themes are heavy, calling for a lot of reflection. They deal with abuse, rape, betrayals, and the end of a marriage. What I like about storytelling in shorter formats is that it leaves a lot of room for imagination and introspection. You can draw up your own conclusions and get many opportunities to question your own beliefs. Dead-End Memories is controlled storytelling. Yoshimoto doesn’t beat around the bush and gives you just the information you need to think about the story and their possible path or outcomes yourself. Some call her writing simple and superficial but I found it to be relatable and fun. I highly recommend this anthology. Read it, weep, smile, and think about some things and memories you have maybe long forgotten. 

Dead-End Memories

Banana Yoshimoto

Translated by Asa Yoneda

Published: 2024

Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd.

Pages: 221, Paperback