(ankle is healing, pretty but dangerous shoes remain completely not on fire [wait for it–it’s worth it], knitting is progressing but not terribly exciting, and the cookie-baking has re-commenced)

The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín.

Tóibín is one of the finest English-language writers I’ve come across.  I first encountered him as the editor of a great anthology called Soho Square 6 (it’s a series–if you can lay hands on a copy of this issue, do).  I’ve been following Tóibín since, and he never disappoints, on the page or in person.  I’ve been fortunate enough to go to a few lectures and symposia that Tóibín also attended, and his insight into the work of writers is immense.  He got his start as a journalist, and his attention to detail and depth is clear throughout his work.  And while I try not to harp on an artist’s sexuality most of the time, Tóibín’s homosexuality is very important in his work.   

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I occasionally go on reading sprees, wherein I accidentally or intentionally read a series of books on a given theme.  I’ve intentionally read only the work of women for a year, I’ve read books on water, books on dogs, only poetry, etc. 

A month or so ago, I accidentally started reading about young men dying in tragic ways.  I had to consciously put an end to the cycle almost as soon as it started. 

In this book, an Irish family is wrecked by the death of a young father.  Decades later, the fractured family is reunited by illness when the son/brother confesses both his homosexuality and his declining health as his HIV turns to AIDS.  It’s all very 90s, open-minded, brave Dublin goodness. 

Except that no one is heroic or even all that "good"  in the novel.  Mother, son, daughter, grandmother, and friends are all grimy and broken and wrong, just like in real life. 

The novel opens in Dublin and then shifts to Enniscorthy on the southeast coast of Ireland.  Declan, the son/brother /patient/friend, asks to be taken to his grandmother’s shore-side house to convalesce.  His friends and longstanding caretakers come into conflict with the women of Declan’s family.  Good smoldering anger throughout.  I won’t give away much more, but will say that there is only the one death in the book–the death of the protagonists’ father when they are children.  That was a welcome relief. 

And on the title–The Blackwater Lightship was a lighthouse in Cush, which served as a counterpart to the Tuskar Lighthouse .  The Blackwater Lightship was removed years ago, but Declan and his sister Helen reminisce about the two lighthouses illuminating their grandmother’s house at night when they were children.  The twin sources of light are, of course, significant in the novel.  Nuff said.

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