The Blackwater Lightship: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize - Tapa blanda

We shall be reading and living with The Blackwater Lightship in twenty years. * Independent on Sunday * He writes in spare, powerful prose and he is truly perceptive about family relationships which, at times, makes reading his stories incredibly painful. But this is a beautiful novel. * Belfast News * It is in his emotional choreography that Toibin shows himself to be an exceptional writer. Helen is estranged from both her mother and grandmother . . . Toibin helps them make peace - and he does it beautifully. * Sunday Telegraph * This is the most astonishing piece of writing, lyrical in its emotion and spare in its construction . . . Toibin has crafted an unmissable read. * Sunday Herald * This is the most astonishing piece of writing, lyrical in its emotion and spare in its construction . . . Toibin has crafted an unmissable read. * Sunday Herald *

Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family. Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her granddaughter Helen - have come together after years of strife and reached an uneasy truce. Helen's adored brother Declan is dying. Two friends join him and the women in a crumbling old house by the sea, where the six of them, from different generations and with different beliefs, must listen and come to terms with one another.