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"The only books that influence are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet to go ourselves."
The Blackwater Lightship
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The Blackwater Lightship
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This Book is Currently in the Wild!
4 journalers for this copy...
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Journal Entry 1 by 
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Journal Entry 2 by 
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Journal Entry 3 by
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Journal Entry 4 by
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The Blackwater Lightship has arrived -- another four-days-from-England-to-Canada surface mail miracle! I started the book last night, and can already see what you mean, Fellraven, about it being easy to read. I will add a label with the BCID before sending it on to Olifant. Thanks very much! (Photo: pumpkins at the Byward Market in Ottawa, October 2004.)
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Colm Tóibín’s The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of three generations of a contemporary Irish family who’ve been estranged from one another for more than a decade, each nursing his or her psychic wounds following the cancer death of their father, husband and son-in-law some twenty years earlier. In the early 1990s, thirty-something Helen O’Doherty, her mother Lily and her grandmother Dora reunite to care for their brother, son and grandson, Declan, as he is in the last stages of a battle with AIDS. Declan has done the unexpected – he has asked to spend his last days in the crumbling old house of his grandmother, on Ireland’s southeast coast. His request is not without meaningful connection to the past, since it was to his grandmother’s home that he and Helen were banished -- as children -- during their father’s illness. It is as though Declan knows that by returning to the scene of his most profound childhood anguish, some healing and reconciliation might be achieved. As Fellraven has noted, this book was a "deceptively easy read". I sailed through its 273 pages in three days of commuter train rides, and each day I looked forward to the beginning and end of my day so as to be able to return to the story. At the same time, I haven’t felt – in a long time – so personally affected by a novel. While the specifics may differ, most of us – at least by middle-age – have been individually touched by two questions I feel lie at the heart of Blackwater Lightship: how to reconcile (or forgive) a painful family relationship, and how to be a loving and emotionally responsible participant in someone else’s death. One of the reviews of Blackwater Lightship I read (see link below) struggled with the question of "deeper meanings" or metaphorical significance in the book (especially in relation to the contemporary Irish political scene). Personally, I wasn’t inclined to spend much time analyzing the book on that level. Every now and again, it really is about our families, ourselves, our broken hearts and the path out of all that pain. It’s a place worth visiting now and again. The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize (it was ultimately beaten to the Booker by J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace) and the 2001 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. You can read a September 1999 Guardian review of Blackwater Lightship here. |
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I have Olifant's address, and will be mailing The Blackwater Lightship to Utrecht on Monday, October 25th. Thanks again, Fellraven -- what a beautiful read!
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Started in it today and didn’t stop until the last page. It’s beautiful! Tears came to my eyes. I smiled. It made me think about family in general. About a loved-one dying and what this does to you and others, family or close-friends.I am going to buy Colm Tóibín’s work from now on. Thanks Fellraven for sharing this book. Side effect: wanting to read the other books shortlisted in 1999 for the Booker Prize, just to compare them to ‘The Blackwater Lightship’. Official website Colm Tóibín Book goes back to Fellraven. |
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Journal Entry 11 by
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Journal Entry 13 by
Released 6 yrs ago (4/18/2005 UTC) at WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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