Product Description

‘This is the most astonishing piece of writing, lyrical in its emotion and spare in its construction . . . Tóibín has crafted an unmissable read’ Sunday Herald

In Blackwater in the early 1990s, three women – Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her granddaughter Helen – have come together after years of strife and reached an uneasy truce. Helen’s adored brother Declan is dying. Two friends join him and the women in a crumbling old house by the sea, where the six of them, from different generations and with different beliefs, must listen and come to terms with one another.

‘It is in his emotional choreography that Tóibín shows himself to be an exceptional writer. Helen is estranged from both her mother and grandmother . . . Tóibín helps them make peace – and he does it beautifully’ Sunday Telegraph

‘He writes in spare, powerful prose and he is truly perceptive about family relationships which, at times, makes reading his stories incredibly painful. But this is a beautiful novel’ Belfast News

‘We shall be reading and living with The Blackwater Lightship in twenty years’ Independent on Sunday

‘Rises to heights of extraordinary beauty’ Independent on Sunday

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8984 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 Devereux clan, 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

About the Author

Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of five novels, most recently The Master, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona and The Sign of the Cross. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He lives in Dublin.

Customer Reviews

An intense exploration of the ties that bind.
Colm Toibin cuts straight to the heart in this sensitive novel of an independent daughter, long estranged from her overly controlling mother, and their attempt to reach some sort of understanding and level of communication. Daughter Helen and mother Lily are drawn to the neutral ground of Helen's grandmother's house in rural Ireland when Helen's brother Declan is gravely ill with AIDS and wants to return to the strand for a last look at the sea. Toibin is both straightforward and graphic in describing Declan's declining health and completely open in describing the romantic relationships of Paul and Larry, Declan's two gay friends who are also attending him at the cottage in Cush. But the focus of the story remains squarely on Helen and Lily and their long estrangement, so intense that Lily was never invited to attend Helen's wedding and, after seven years, still has not seen her grandchildren. In the crucible of Declan's sick room, those attending him are painfully aware of the tenuousness of life, and as they reach out to him with love, they share many of their innermost feelings and the stories that have shaped their lives.

In prose that is so simple and so controlled one wonders how it can possibly carry the weight of these emotion packed scenes, Toibin empathizes with Helen, a daughter whose mother failed to meet her emotional needs when she was a child, and then tried to overpower and control her when she became strong enough to stand on her own. At the same time, he explores Lily's competing needs and the limitations imposed on her by her husband's early death and her need to support her family both financially and physically.

The obvious symbolism of the lightship, the wave-washed strand, and the eroding headland on which the grandmother's cottage perches adds weight and universality to the crises facing the participants in this intense and poignant domestic drama. The involved reader will come away with new understandings of the need for connection, the essence of compassion, and the full meaning of love as the characters in this thematically complete novel find their resolutions. Mary Whipple

Love, Family, AIDS and Dysfunction
Helen O'Doherty lives in Dublin with her husband and two sons. She is a school principal and set with her life. She is happy and even though she may be a bit more reserved in her marriage than her husband would like, all seems well. When school is over she and her hubby plan a large party in their new home to celebrate. Her husband and children will go the next day to visit relatives, and Helen will follow when she clears up her end of school issues. Helen worries about her life and her children. Are they too needy? Is it right that the youngest needs his parents so thoroughly? Helen seems to be a thoroughly modern woman of the 90's- ready to live her life. Helen's family is off and she is ready to go to school when a friend of her brother, Declan, arrives to tell her Declan is seriously ill and needs to see her. And so it goes.. Paul, Declan's friend tells her he has AIDS and has been ill for quite a while. He does not have a serious relationship right now, and he does need a place to go to recuperate. It is decided by Declan that he wants to go to Grandmother's house, but first, would Helen tell Grandmother and mom, Lily about his disease?
No small deed is this one...Helen has had an on -again off-again relationship with her mother and grandmother for years. In fact, she has only seen them at Christmas time, but neither was invited to her wedding nor have they met her family or children. How will she tell them, what will they say and how will they react? Oh, no, what to do...
Mom- Lily, Helen, Paul and Larry, Declan's friends all move into grandmother's house in a desolate spot on the ocean near the Blackwater Lightship. This place and house has particular meaning to the family-they were brought up here. Lily, the mom as a child; Helen and Declan when they father got sick and died and mom left them, or abandoned them, as Helen and Declan remember. This dysfunctional family now has a chance to reclaim their lost relationships. Paul and Larry are gay, as is Declan, and as they reveal their lives, the lives of the others come into semblance. The living and the dying , the coming and the going, the new and the old all take on extra meaning.

Colm Toibin has written a marvelous study of a family entwined in the everyday business of living and dying in his book "The Blackwater Lightship: A Novel". The relationships in this family are not unusual, but so well written in such a cleverly calm but studied manner. Colm Toibin's knowledge of the clinical process of AIDS is well revealed and accurate. You feel like you are in the midst of Declan's fevers and
pain and suffering. The judgment of being Gay and having AIDS in the 90's is explored and well written. This is a book of the ages- always timely, relationships explored, the pain and suffering of lost time with family well documented. A novel to learn from. Colm Toibin was on the short list for the Booker prize for
this novel. He is an author to be recommended- a writer of fabulous ability- to be enjoyed and thought about for days after the novel is finished. prisrob

'Imaginings and resonances and pain'
A young Dublin man, Declan, is dying of AIDS. He comes out of hospital to go back and stay at his Grandmother's house by the sea. This brings his Grandmother Dora, his mother Lily, and his sister Helen there to join him, together with two of Declan's gay friends Paul and Larry. Although the tragedy of an AIDS death is at the centre of the book, it isn't the focus. In fact Declan is the least realised character. The real story is the difficult relationship between the three women. Lily and Helen in particular have barely spoken for years.

The book follows Helen, in third person past tense, but sympathy moves around. We get Helen's viewpoint, and see her mother through her eyes - but we also see her vision as partial and flawed. The book doesn't apportion blame - it shows all the characters as complex with their own internal lives that others - even those closest to them - can never fully comprehend.

I found some of the writing and dialogue a little flat, but the book became more moving as it went on. And there is a real parallel in its viewpoint with that of Jim Crace in 'Being Dead':

'Imaginings and resonances and pain and small longings and prejudices. They meant nothing against the resolute hardness of the sea...It might have been better, she felt, if there had never been people, if this turning of the world, and the glistening sea, and the morning breeze happened without witnesses, without anyone feeling, or remembering, or dying, or trying to love.'

This is millennial blues and a sense of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things, but it is balanced by, despite everything, the warmth of everyone towards Declan, and the attempts they all finally make - however haltingly - to understand and connect with each other.