num_pages: 288
description: 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.
language: English
title: The Blackwater Lightship
titlecomplete: The Blackwater Lightship
genres: Ireland, Literary Fiction, LGBT, Novels, Queer, Gay, Literature, Irish Literature, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 6737
places: Ireland
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
category: Shortlist
publisher: Scribner