In a courtroom and on the page

Long Island by Colm Tóibín

Dear Readers,

Sometimes, I become swept up in real-life legal dramas. I follow court trials.

For years, I thought of this as a personality flaw. Why was I interested in leering at other people’s misfortune?

But a few months ago, I was at a dinner party where a fellow guest was a trial lawyer. When she learned that I was a novelist, she started asking about how I write. Her questions were detailed and technical enough to stir my curiosity—why was she asking?

This lawyer reads novels to learn about storytelling. She studies structure to see how information is presented and how much detail is filled in. I realized I follow trials to see how a story unfolds using structure, exhibits, and witnesses.

A lawyer who learns from novels. A writer who learns from court transcripts.

This is to say, I’ve been following Donald Trump’s trials — specifically the hush money case (or, more accurately the falsifying of business records to influence the 2016 election). Stormy Daniels, a woman who was paid to stay quiet about an affair, testified this week. It was riveting to listen to the machinations of the justice system, but I’m concerned about the future of democracy.

I needed a break.

I found relief in a novel just out this week, Long Island by Colm Tóibín — I loved it.

This is a sequel to Tóibín’s 2009 novel, Brooklyn. In it, a young Irish woman, Eilis, falls in love and emigrates to New York. It’s a wonderful book, but you don’t need to have read it first to enjoy this one.

I’ve been a huge fan of Tóibín’s since having my socks knocked off by his novel The Testament of Mary, which I wrote about for The Millions.

Long Island picks up Eilis’s story 20 years later. It’s 1976. She’s married Tony Fiorello and has become part of his extended family. There’s a knock at her door. A stranger tells Eilis that Tony has had an affair. The stranger’s wife is pregnant. He doesn’t want the baby. “If anyone thinks I am keeping an Italian plumbers’s brat in my house… ”

After the birth, the stranger says he plans to drop the baby off on Eilis’s doorstep.

Eilis, also needing a break, goes to visit her family in Ireland. There, she sees Jim, her former boyfriend.

This is a love story full of longing and silence. The characters never quite say what they think. They are held back by family commitments and social customs.

And it’s the tension held in the love story that allows Tóibín to linger on fine details. Whether it’s Sunday dinner when Eilis gives her father-in-law an honest opinion about the war, or when her mother sneers at a new washing machine and her American ways, the difficulties of Eilis's choices play throughout.

There’s a quiet tragedy about Eilis, but Tóibín gives her dignity. The characters in Donald Trump’s trial, on the other hand, are loud. Dignity has left the building.

While Trump denies having an affair with Stormy Daniels, experts agreed that her testimony about it was compelling. A lawyer said she was believable because of the details she gave. On the night of the affair, for example, she went through his toiletry bag and found Old Spice and Pert Plus Shampoo—who could make that up?

Colm Tóibín probably could. He breathes life into his characters using details that speak to the larger tension, much like a 2-in-1 shampoo speaks to the tenor of an affair. These kinds of details light up the inner life of a person. They are what make stories compelling.

While I don’t recommend the Trump trials, I highly recommend Long Island. I hope you love it as much as I did.

Yours in books,

Claire

P.S.

• Tóibín is pronounced 'toe-bean' with a little oomph on the bean.

• Voices from spring, 1924, my latest poem in The Globe & Mail. I took a deep dive into newspaper archives. Some things were different, a duck roast cost 50c. And some things were the same; concern about auto theft and a Soviet invasion.

• An editor sent me an early copy of Moon Road by Sarah Leipciger, which was published this week. I loved it and endorsed it. As writer Claire Fuller said about the book: “A love story, a tragedy, a road trip. Some of the best writing you'll read.” Exactly.

• One of my favourite books from last year, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant, won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing and was selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction. It’s necessary reading, and it’s also gripping.

• You didn’t ask, but one of the best podcasts for following the Trump trials is Prosecuting Donald Trump. The hosts, veteran prosecutors Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord, combine their trial experience with an insider view of the law.

• This is a monthly letter. It’s free. Thank you for reading.