I was apprehensive about picking up Colm Tóibín’s Long Island, the sequel to his wildly successful Brooklyn. I had read it, before it became a movie starring Saiorse Ronan, and found it ultimately unsatisfying. Tóibín’s work stands apart from most modern literary fiction. He’s quite restrained in showing instead of telling, which means his work often lacks his characters’ inner voice. And without it, it’s hard to figure out their motivations.

But Long Island achieves something striking. In revisiting Brooklyn’s characters 20 years later, and examining the impact of their choices on their lives, it illuminates the motivation behind their past choices then. For me, Long Island redeems Brooklyn’s emotional opacity.