The Blackwater Lightship (Paperback)

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

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

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.