The Blackwater Lightship: A Novel
by Colm Toibin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Colm ToibinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-06-05
ISBN: 0743203313
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Book Reviews of The Blackwater Lightship: A Novel
Book Review: Heart-thumping novel tunes into silent language of family
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Summary of The Blackwater Lightship: A Novel
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.
In the opening pages of The Blackwater Lightship, a stranger drives up to Helen O'Doherty's Dublin house to tell her that her brother Declan is in the hospital and needs to see her. At his request, she joins him at the creepy seaside house of their grandmother--where, as children, they awaited news of their dying father. What's more, they're not the only guests. Paul and Larry, friends of Declan who have known about his HIV diagnosis far longer than his family, are the next to arrive. And then comes Helen's estranged mother Lily, whom she hasn't seen in years. Still angry over the emotional abandonment she suffered during her youth, Helen had refused even to invite Lily to her wedding. Now she must come to terms not only with the imminent death of her beloved brother but also with her mother and grandmother--all at once.
Colm Tóibín (The Story of the Night) delivers this unsentimental account of a troubled family in spare but suggestive language. He does allow his characters a few high-spirited remarks and the occasional outburst. Otherwise, though, he keeps his tone even, allowing for the perfect integration of a light, unforced symbolism. For Lily, broken hopes and dreams are bound up with the Blackwater Lightship, one of two lighthouses that once stood in the Irish Sea near Ballyconnigar. As a child, she believed that these would always be there:
Tuskar was a man and the Blackwater Lightship was a woman and they were both sending signals to each other and to other lighthouses, like mating calls. He was forceful and strong and she was weaker but more constant, and sometimes she began to shine her light before darkness had really fallen.For Helen, on the other hand, it was the house itself that prompted her deepest, happiest fantasies. But now Lily has sold the property and shattered Helen's dream that "it would be her refuge, and that her mother, despite everything, would be there for her and would take her in and shelter her and protect her. She had never entertained this thought before; now, she knew that it was irrational and groundless, but nonetheless ... she knew that it was real and it explained everything." What Declan has done by drawing them all together at Granny's house is to enact this potent, poignant fantasy. Whether it has the power to reconstruct his family is another matter, but in any case, The Blackwater Lightship remains a gripping narrative, deftly delivered by a master storyteller. --Regina Marler
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