Colm Toibin’s remarkable sequel to Brooklyn is a lesson on tortured regret in middle age

Can we ever return to the past or renew a lost love? These are the central tenets of the Irish author’s latest novel – a pacey read that revisits some much-loved characters tackling some of life’s big questions, writes Robert McCrum

Colm Toibin is the master of extracting the maximum effect from the minimum of prose (Reynaldo Rivera)

Colm Tóibín, a brilliant and congenial figure in the Irish literary landscape, is also a student, and teacher, of the classic English novel who’s become – shall we say – affectionately obsessed with its subtle inner workings and ageless storytelling imperatives. 

When I interviewed the author in 2009 following the publication of his revered novel Brooklyn, which charts the love, loss and life choices of young Irishwoman Eilis, I found Tóibín to be full of zeal for a return to first principles. “Look at Austen,” he declared. “In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory.”

As if reproving his literature students, he exclaimed, “Let’s have no more backstory! Can we please have no more ‘I’d like to know more about...’?” In such a vein, a Tóibín lecture sounds like a bracing experience, from which many an English creative-writing course might profit, and one that underpins his most recent fiction.