Tóibín’s main business in the novel seems to be the denial of expectation. He has deliberately written neither the default gay novel (polemical and operatic) nor the required Irish one (superstition, bigotry, whimsy.)
Books The Blackwater Lightship
- Author
-
Colm Tóibín
- Year
- 1999
- Publisher
- Picador
-
-
…the novel’s achievement lies in its depiction of the everyday enterprise of loss.
Mark Lawson
-
Colm Tóibín’s austere, monkish prose, in which everything is exactly itself and redolent of nothing else, belongs to this anti-Revivalist legacy, as do his political opinions. The novel explores ambiguous feelings in an unambiguous world.
Our Thoughts
Tóibín’s elegant prose is eclipsed by an excess of cliché. Modern Ireland is launching a relentless attack on Old Ireland and, apparently, this must be emphasised on every page.
— Lily Power
Freedom
Frankenstein
The Corrections