"The Blackwater Lightship" is a moving novel written by Irish novelist Colm Tóibín, and was short-listed for Britain's Booker Prize.
The story is described from the viewpoint of Helen, a sucessful school principal living with her husband and two children in Ireland. She learns one day that her brother Declan, who was homosexual, had been a sufferer of AIDS for years, and had refused to tell her until then. He asks her to deliver their mother and grandmother the news. This presents a challenge to Helen as she had had minimal contact with either women due to deeply buried conflicts relating to Helen's past and her father's sudden death in her childhood.
As the three women meet again they are forced to overcome these struggles for Declan's sake. The novel follows the painful journey they must take in order to correct the misunderstanding that exists between them.
The family scenes at the beginning of The BlackwaterLightship, Colm TóibÃn's fourth novel, are so leisurely that they inspire a growing sense of mystery as to what the book is going to be about.
There, Helen confronts the sources of her estrangement from her mother, and begins the journey to reconciliation, with a bit of insight—accepted after some resistance—from Declan's alternative family of gay friends, who have been caring for him in his sickness.
Blackwater's leaden backstory sometimes gives way to writing of a comparable pitch, centering on spare dialogue that bristles with tension and passive-aggressive barbs.
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