The Blackwater Lightship: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize - Hardcover

Tóibín, Colm

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330389858 ISBN 13: 9780330389853

Publisher: Picador, 1999

Synopsis

Helen's brother is dying, and with two of his friends she waits for the end in her grandmother's crumbling old house. Her mother and grandmother, after years of strife have come to an uneasy peace. The six of them, from different generations and beliefs, are forced to come to terms with each other.

About this title

Review

Set in Ireland in the 1990s, the The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family. Helen doesn't get on with her mother Lily, and Lily doesn't get on with her mother Dora. Three generations of women, tetchy with recriminations and memory, are forced together when they discover that Helen's younger brother, Declan, is dying from an AIDS-related illness: "It was like a dark shadow in a dream, and then it became real and sharp."

This novel is an intense examination of Colm Toibin's signature themes: death, loss, illness and morality. However, if the themes are a continuance from his previous books, the style is a distinct departure from the lyrical prose of The Story of the Night and The Heather Blazing. In The Blackwater Lightship Toibin strips his style down to spare sentences, and what is said is bleaker: "It was clear to her now that it did not matter whether there were people or not--the world would go on. Imaginings and resonances and pains and small longings, they meant nothing against the hardness of the sea." It is almost as if he is writing us and himself, as the novelist, out of the picture. The familiar poetry of landscape: "the sudden rise in the road and then the first view of the sea glinting in the slanted summer light", is all that is left.

There is not much plot, the book concentrates on the gradual unfolding of talk between the Devereuxs, and two friends of Declan's, who have fine lines of catty commentary. Dora asks: "Is there a need to rake over everything?" But words, even bitter ones, are shaky constants, when everything else is crumbling. This puts a lot of pressure on the prose; when it works well it's charged with suppressed emotion, strangely lulling in its determination to be quiet and ordinary. But sometimes its simplicity makes the book a little static, threatening to becalm the reader. The Blackwater Lightship is a book about the frailty of human experiences, in the face of indifferent nature: "soon they would only be a memory, and that too would fade with time." Toibin deals with the tricky balance between hopefulness and hopelessness with elegant economy, and very few stumbles. --Eithne Farry

Review

Stephen McCauley author of "The Man of the House"Colm Tiibin's rich new novel is a portrait of three generations of strong, independent women, sorting through the love and resentments that bind them. As Helen helps her mother and grandmother care for her dying brother in a remote, crumbling house by the sea, she confronts her own strengths and vulnerabilities. "The Blackwater Lightship" is written with tenderness, precision, and remarkable insight. It is a deeply moving novel and ultimately, a hopeful one.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0330389858
• ISBN 13: 9780330389853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272