The Blackwater Lightship.

The Blackwater Lightship * Colm Toibin * Scribner * $24

Irish author Colm Toibin's last fictional work, The Story of the Night, won the 1998 Ferro-Grumley Award for best gay novel and made the Publishing Triangle's list of the 100 best gay and lesbian novels of all time. His latest, The Blackwater Lightship, which has already been shortlisted for Britain's prestigious Booker Prize, should finally prove to straight American readers what many gay people have long known: that Toibin is one of the more honest and subtly powerful novelists publishing today.

Set in Ireland during the early 1990s, The Blackwater Lightship follows the emotionally insular Helen as she temporarily leaves her husband and two sons to tend her younger brother, Declan, who is dying of AIDS complications. The family crisis reunites Helen with her manipulative mother and controlling grandmother after a decade of estrangement. Suddenly thrust together amid the stark, craggy cliffs of the Irish countryside, the three women confront old quarrels, Declan's homosexuality, and his imminent death. Perceptive and moving, The Blackwater Lightship again reveals Toibin to be the kind of restrained, quiet writer whose prose feels as natural as breathing. His poetic narrative is so understated that its profound lyricism often takes you by surprise, infusing a potentially familiar tale with vibrant new life.