The Blackwater Lightship

Colm Tóibín

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Declan is dying from AIDS.  His sister Helen, estranged from both her mother, Lily, and her grandmother, Dora, has to break the news to them.  Declan’s desire to leave hospital in Dublin and visit his grandmother’s house one last time brings them all together for a few days, in which old tensions rise to the surface.

This is a curious book, which I enjoyed reading, as Tóibín’s style is extremely engaging, and his ear for dialogue is good.  He is confident enough of his subject not to have to have to explain why it is that the women don’t like each other – after all, people in families sometimes just don’t get on.  But these three women are so uncomfortable with one another, and so cold generally, that it’s hard not to think that there must be a specific cause for their behaviour somewhere in the past.  Moreover, as my colleague Karen rightly pointed out to me, Declan and his male friends, by contrast, are all warm, sensible, mature adults - a mere coincidence? - review by Dan Fenton

As always, Tóibín’s prose is spare, lucid, penetrating.  In this portrait of three generations of women in modern Ireland, he skilfully blends present with past as Dora (grandmother), Lily (mother) and Helen (daughter) struggle to understand the crisis that has reunited them - the imminent death from AIDS of Helen’s brother Declan.  Tóibín balances understandably bleak scenes with some of gentle humour and brings the novel to a satisfying, if not happy, conclusion. - review by Karen Wadman