The blackwater lightship

Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Tóibín’s The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family, and reveals the intense connection between grandmother, mother and daughter.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.’It is in his emotional choreography that Tóibín shows himself to be an exceptional writer’ – Sunday Telegraph