Guest Lecture: Prof. Kate Costello-Sullivan (Le Moyne College, NY, USA), “'Time to Consider it': Immigrant Regret and Redemption in Colm Tóibín’s 'Long Island'"

In his review of Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel Brooklyn, New York Times reviewer Alex Witchel hauntingly captures the dilemma confronting Eilis Lacey upon her return to Ireland: ‘A central question for Eilis Lacey…is: Do you relinquish whatever identity you’ve built to collapse back into…the warm embrace of family and small town that long ago defined you as so much less? And if that is what ‘home’ means, is that where you want to be?’^[i]  Tóibín’s sequel, Long Island, picks up with Eilis (Lacey) Fiorello, now a mother and a betrayed wife, and invites us to reconsider and reframe what this kind of “return” can mean. In this presentation, I argue that Long Island confronts the thorny issues not only of immigration, but also of life choices and regret. I suggest that the novel ultimately reflects powerfully on what it means to “go home again;” what the relationship between place and identity is; and what the costs of such a decision are, not only for an individual, but for all those with whom one’s life intersects.

^[i] Witchel, ‘His Irish Diaspora.’ The New York Times. Review of Brooklyn. April 29, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03toibin-t.html. Accessed 28 August 2024. Online.

Kate Costello-Sullivan is Professor of Modern Irish literature at Le Moyne College in Syracuse NY and a past President of the American Conference for Irish Studies.  She has published widely on 19th-21st-c Irish fiction; her monographs are Mother/Country: Politics of the Personal in the Fiction of Colm Tóibín and Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-first-Century Irish Novel. She has also edited critical editions of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Norah Hoult's Poor Women!. Most recently, Kate co-edited a collection with Cian McMahon on the History of Irish America for Routledge. She is the current Editor of Syracuse University Press’s Irish series.

Registration 

If you are interested in participating in this online event, please sign up by submitting this registration form or sending an email with the subject line “COSTELLO-SULLIVAN” to irishstudies@uni-wuerzburg.de by May 25, 2025. Please include your full name and affiliation. Online participants will receive a zoom link to the event in due time. Please note that the above given email address is used solely for registration purposes. If you want to contact ISWÜ, please use the contact information given below.

Contact
Irish Studies Würzburg (ISWÜ)
Prof. Dr. Ina Bergmann & Prof. Dr. Maria Eisenmann
ina.bergmann@uni-wuerzburg.de,  maria.eisenmann@uni-wuerzburg.de