No: 9 Irish Queer Literature In The 1990s

“Joanna and Helen are in their 20s - confident, successful, at ease with themselves and their lives. Suddenly, inexplicably, their childhood friendship turns into an intense and sexually explosive passion, bringing turmoil in its wake.” So goes the blurb on Ireland’s first overtly lesbian novel, published at the beginning of the 1990s. Linda Cullen’s The Kiss caused quite a stir in the media, although the author was advised by her publishers to steer clear of mentioning the fact that the love affair at its heart was based on her own experiences.

The decade closed with the publication of Colm Tóibín’s The Blackwater Lightship, which is arguably the Irish AIDS masterpiece. Set in the early 90s, a young man dying of Aids- related illness is tended to his friends and family in a crumbling house in Wexford.

Helen, her mother Lily, and her grandmother have come together to look after Helen’s brother, Declan, who is dying. With Declan’s two friends, the six of them are forced to come to terms with each other, and particularly with homosexuality.

“You know, in my family,” remarks Larry, the gay architect, “my brothers and sisters – even the married ones – still haven’t told my parents that they are heterosexual.”

An international success (a film was made, starring Angela Lansbury), The Blackwater Lightship was the last of a raft of standout queer Irish novels published in the 1990s, including Emma Donoghue’s coming of age novel Stir Fry (1994); Keith Ridgway’s story of a gay man’s relationship with his mother after he comes out, The Long Falling (1998); Frank Ronan’s tale of a dangerous love affair in Goa Lovely (1995); Tóibín’s coming out novel, The Story of the Night (1996); and Mary Dorcey’s story of a doomed lesbian love affair, Biography of Desire (1997).