The Blackwater Lightship

The Blackwater Lightship is set in the early 1990s in an old house in Ireland. Helen and her family have gathered there to care for her brother, who is dying of AIDS. A portrayal of a family at war with itself, whose storytelling and truth revealing may be able to heal all their wounds. nFrom the author of The Master and Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín weaves together the lives of three generations of estranged women as they reunite to witness and mourn the death of a brother, a son, and a grandson.

It is Ireland in the early 1990s. Helen, her mother, Lily, and her grandmother, Dora, have come together to tend to Helen's brother, Declan, who is dying of AIDS. With Declan's two friends, the six of them are forced to plumb the shoals of their own histories and to come to terms with each other. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Blackwater Lightship is a deeply resonant story about three generations of an estranged family reuniting to mourn an untimely death. In spare, luminous prose, Colm Tóibín explores the nature of love and the complex emotions inside a family at war with itself. Hailed as a genuine work of art (Chicago Tribune), this is a novel about the capacity of stories to heal the deepest wounds.