Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and Beautiful Novel From Ireland
Review: A personal favourite, THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP is a frank, intelligent and always intense work. The novel is about self-examination, opening the closet, understanding the past and embracing the future. It begs you to forgive and forget, and try to see the past another way.All six of this novel's major characters (Helen, Lily, Declan, Mrs Deveroux, Paul and Larry) are unforgettable, and most scenes created are memorable, and, at times, incredibly painful to read- the depiction of Declan's "mood", the coldness between Lily and Helen, the often irrational behaviour of Mrs Deveroux, the relationship between Cathal and Manus to cite a few. The car scene with Helen, Lily and Declan would have to be my favourite. The narration of this scene is simply beautiful and emotional. Yes, it could be a bit sentimental, but it will surely touch and nourish your heart and soul. A rare, original dramatic moment. (Written here also is the most memorable, sensitive account of a 'love that dare not speak' relationship) Shortlisted for the 1999 BOOKER PRIZE (DISGRACE won), this is one novel you will surely treasure, value and enjoy. I can only recommend this unmissable work by Toibin.
Rating:
Summary: Quietly sensitive and enduring piece of work
Review: Colm Toibin's "Blackwater Lightship" is arguably the dark horse in this year's Booker Prize race. The three generation family drama at the heart of this deceptively slight novel may not set any sparks flying but chances are you'd still be thinking of it long after the story has ended and settled into a warm afterglow. Toibin is an unflashy writer. He aims straight for your heart and succeeds in a disarmingly off-the-cuff way. The opening chapters have a luminous quality about them that sets the tone for Helen's subsequent encounter with her mother (Lily) and grandmother (Dora). The event that brings three generations of feuding mothers and daughters together is Declan's terminal illness from AIDS. In caring for and trying to make peace with the dying Declan, they resolve their differences with each other in a chillingly unsentimental and cold eyed manner. Ironically, the characterisation of the three women at the centre of Toibin's novel are a little weak and indistinct compared to Paul and Larry (Declan's friends) who spring to life as the story unfolds. Declan, however, remains little more than a catalyst. His part is curiously underwritten. Tuskar Rock and Blackwater Lightship, two lighthouses out at sea, one still working, the other not, are deeply symbolic of the choices facing the feuding family members. They can either decide to close the chapter and get on with their lives or continue to nurse their wounds privately and watch them fester. The recurring image of the landslide eating into their neighbour's house is also a powerful metaphor for the corrosion of family relationships. "Blackwater Lightship" is a sensitive and quietly enduring piece of work that will surely touch you. The final chapters including an unlikely one with Helen and Paul baring their souls to each other, are absolutely devastating. This is literary fiction of the finest quality that deserves to be read. Not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Love, Family, AIDS and Dysfunction
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Touching
Review: I am part of a newly started book club. The novel "The Blackwater lightship" by Colm Tóibín (shortlisted for the Booker Prize) was chosen as the second book to read (my first - as I have just joined the club). The number of girls attending our dinners vary between 3 and 12, all Australian but me. As I joined late, my friend Rachael had already finished the book. She did not care too much for it, so I started out slightly biased to the book. But that quickly changed, and I hadn't read too many pages before I emailed Rachael and said "I really like this book!!".. The story is set in Ireland in the early 1990'ies, and it starts as a stranger comes to Helen O'Doherty's house to tell her that her brother, Declan, is dying of AIDS. Helen rushes to visits Declan in the hospital in Dublin. Declan tells her that he would like to leave the hospital and spend some time at his grandmother's house by the sea. Helen and Declan spent a lot of time at their grandparent's house as children, but Helen worries that a dying grandson will be to much for their aging grandmother. Nevertheless, they go there, and they all end up living at Dora's place: Declan, Helen, Lily, and two of Declan's friends; Paul and Larry. Helen and her mother Lily have a very distant and (on the surface of things) unemotional relationship. It really impressed me that a man has with such amazing authenticity been able to capture this complex mother-daughter relationship. Although Declan is the one who is dying, the book is first and foremost about Helen and how she accepts and understand the past, forgives what was to forgive, and how she grow to be emotionally attached again to her mother Lily. My favorite character from the book is by far the grandmother, Dora. She is an amazingly strong and strong willed woman. I love how she takes a taxi to town every Wednesday to go shopping, and do her things. I just fell in love with her. My favorite scenes from the book is when Paul is `having a go' at Lily for not understanding anything - and Dora is on the sideline cheering for Paul. The second scene is when Larry is teaching Dora to drive. Absolutely fantastic!! The ending was lovely too, without being clichéd and predictable or sappy for that matter. The author has an impressive ability to superbly develop characters. His writing style is in many ways similar to Hemingway, sparse but yet luminous. With "The Blackwater Lightship" Colm Tóibín has written a beautiful book. It's one of the finest explorations of a dysfunctional family I've come across. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Quietly sensitive and enduring piece of work
Review: Mr. Colm Toibin addresses an event both common and simultaneously unique in, "The Blackwater Lightship". This book will not appeal to all, as the most extreme may deem the illness that will eventually kill the focus of the book, as something deserved. That the inevitable outcome that has resulted from this new affliction that has gone from unknown killer of a few to a worldwide life taking tragedy is still a stigmatized disease. Expanded outside the principal character in this book, a great irony is that action, which is one of the most basic necessities for the survival of any species, has also become a way to die. A young man returns to his Grandmother's home. His condition is perilous and the secrets he has kept from his Family must now be coped with along with his frail health. That a tragedy can bring together estranged Family members is not new, however the Author brings together a wider group that is not just the traditional Family but a surrogate one as well. There are the inevitable clashes of those who have cared for him when there was no Family member to be found, his biological Family who feels these friends are intruders, and then the conflicts that have kept three generations of women apart for a decade. The resolutions that must take place so that a daughter will allow her mother to see her children for the first time in that decade, and meet her son in law for the first time as well. The story is set in Catholic Ireland and deals with issues of non-traditional partners and the Catholic Church that are difficult, and will not be received well by those who hold with tradition. This was a gutsy book to write and well deserving of being short-listed for the prestigious, "Booker Prize". The Author is a very talented writer and even though some will pass his work by due to subject matter they are most certainly the losers. Literature may not always be comfortable to all who read it, readers may not agree with an idea, a theology, or a lifestyle. However to deprive oneself from a talented Author who discusses social issues for which beliefs are passionately held would be a loss. This is a wonderful book about extraordinary people.
Rating:
Summary: A Startling Gem Of A Novel On A Family Coping With AIDS
Review: Quite simply, Colm Toibin's "The Blackwater Lightship" is the finest novel or memoir I've read by a critically acclaimed Irish or Irish-American author. He has a subtle, magical way with prose that will keep you thinking about the tale long after you've finished reading it. I am not surprised that this splendid little novel was short-listed for the British Booker Prize. It's one of the finest explorations of a dysfunctional family I've come across. I strongly commend Toibin for having the determination and talent to write well about AIDS, and making it an important, and sympathetic, part of this tale. "The Blackwater Lightship" is primarily about Helen and how she becomes emotionally attached again to her mother Lily, when they are confronted with the news that her brother Declan is dying from AIDS. The story moves swiftly from Declan's hospital ward in Dublin to the seaside home of Lily's mother Dora, so Declan can enjoy one last glimpse of the sea. The tale also revolves around Declan's two male friends and their relationship with his sister, mother and grandmother.
Rating: 
Summary: Heart-thumping novel tunes into silent language of family
Review: THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP explores the nature of relationship between family members and between friends. It is the story of three generations of an estranged family reuniting to tender an untimely death. As the story ominously unfolds, deeper and more unplumbed layers of the wounds, emotions, misunderstanding, and pent-up anger manifest as friends of dying Declan, who had been through all the difficult times in battling AIDS, joined the begrudged family. It was at such sober and difficult time like this that everyone, regardless of their past wounds, unforgiving grudges, and even moral disapproval of homosexual life, should forget their differences and prioritize Declan's comfort and happiness.
Helen dreaded breaking the news of her brother's sickness to her mother, Lily, not only because of the despondent nature of the incurable disease, but also due to the fact that she had deliberately excluded her mother from her life for 10 years. Ever since the row she had with her mother about moving to Dublin for school, Helen shut herself off to her mother, who had never got over the early, unexpected death of Helen's father. Helen could never forgive Lily of her abandoning her and her brother at the Granny's house after her father's funeral. Whereas for Lily, she had never expressed her pent-up fear and shame that descended in her immediately after the funeral. The years of ice and alienation unfortunately turned into a standoffish rife that excluded Lily from her daughter's life and family. Helen's bitterness toward her mother pervaded into her own family life, for her husband must have learned long ago to live with and manage the web of unresolved connections when he puzzled at her periods of withdrawal and caprice.
The ingenuity of the book lies in the intensive de-layering of such family grudges and magnification of feelings in a time of mourning. Even though Lily made a promise to herself upon the burial of her husband to do her best with the children, Helen's inveterate resentment rooted in the fact that her mother had taken her father away. In her morbid consciousness, Helen always fantasized her mother being forceful and pushy chasing after her, determined to stop her having her life. Helen wished her mother to tolerate people and accommodate their needs, but all Lily wanted was that Helen could take interests in her and her life.
Friendship is an indefeasible element of this novel. Declan's friends have always been there fighting the disease and egging him on. When Lily was rude and hostile to his friends, telling them to leave him to her, they fearlessly confronted how they had been looking after him during numerous life-and-death occasions when the family did not even seem to be around. Paul stood his ground being the closest friend to Declan. He read all the relevant books and kept himself cognizant of the latest therapies. He knew what and how to make Declan comfortable and to mitigate his pain. Paul vowed staunchly that he would stay with Declan and he would never leave unless Declan asked him to. Declan even confided in him about his mother with phrases and sentences which were not edifying. Moved to such loyalty and love the friends showed Declan, the stiff family succumbed to what they said and was inspired to reconcile its own strife.
THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP explores how true friendship can supercede relationship with family in a palpitating, brooding time of crisis. The fact that Declan chose not to trouble his mother, though he loved her, showed that the family was not as close to him as his friends were to him. This corroborated to the fact that his mother had no clue to his sexual orientation. Declan's fear of coming out to his mother and grandmother erected the barrier that stifled him to seek help from his family. He might be so afraid that his mother, at the knowledge of his sickness, would refuse to see him, even though he desperately wanted her to know and help him. Friendship not only filled this void but also dawned on the understanding, the de-icing, and finally the reconciliation of an unplumbed grudge that spanned over three generations of a family. Friendship offered to the family, with what openness and honesty, challenged the family's evasiveness. At one point in the book, the three friends were walking along on the beach, with Paul and Larry on either sides of Declan, quietly protecting him. This memorable scene epitomizes true friendship and is symbolic of the two lighthouses that unfailingly lights up Blackwater. Friends are guiding lights.
Last but not the least, a more submerged point. The novel reflects on the palpitating struggle of one's gay identity. The quintessential "I knew that I was gay, but I had done nothing about it", the self-denial, and the resolution toward love and gay marriage are all touched on in this moving tale. It is an intense tale of woe and redemption, full of entrancing stories about the characters that so fatefully overlap. It's a humanizing, heart-thumping novel that tunes into the silent language of family.
Rating:
Summary: A Gem
Review: This book has only 288 pages, with its light touch and relaxing statement it can be read in one sitting. But this is a gem indeed. The atmosphere is superb. The story of this struggling family gives me a tranquil, distant, dark and somber ireland beach, with its wind blowing and wave rumbling. It's amazing. And, come back home, the wounded one.
Rating:
Summary: Prepared to be amazed.......
Review: This was my first amble into the world of Colm Toibin and it was a plesent surprise. Faced with a less than thrilling title and grey cover, I didnt think it would make my heart ring. Colm has created a book that I like to call a touch and smell book. From the opening I can feel the home and emotions like they are my own. From the warmth of the traditional Irish party to the love Lilly feels for her childern and husband, all so very real. Not the romantic view of family love but the true nature of love. Even Lillys estranged mother is not painted as a black character here. The complexity of the mother daughter relationship is so well written that one wonders if a male writer has ever painted this portraite so well? Her brother is dying of AIDS but this is not the issue here. The issue is he is dying, for anyone who has ever coped with losing a loved one this drives into the very heart. If you are a wife, a mother a husband or a lover, or indeed just a man or woman who has loved, this book is one you take with you. Enjoy
Rating:
Summary: My First Exposure................
Review: This was my first exposure to Colm Toibin's writing and I really enjoyed it. This is a beautifully written novel set in the early 1990's in Ireland where three generations of very independent strong-willed women; daughter, mother, and grandmother, have come together to face the tragic illness of Declan who is dying of AIDS. Declan's sister, mother, and grandmother must each deal with this issue. However, what the story is really about is how they must first deal with a decade of estrangement from each other, and how they must now come to terms with each other and maybe become a family again. Is this possible? Or will Helen remain as cold to her mother as she has been the past 10 years? What is revealed about their past will answer these questions. An easy read, but a story that's filled with lots of detail, emotion, and yes even love. I believe the story pivoting on Helen as the main character was well done. Yes, it could have dealt more with Declan's life and his friends, but that's not what the book was about. The women are the central point, and the author has done a wonderful job in a beautifully written story here. I look forward to checking out his other books now.
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