The Heather Blazing Book

At Boolavogue as the sun was setting
O'er the bright May meadows of Shelmalier,
A rebel hand set the heather blazing
and brought the neighbours from far and near.

Toibin's writing is beautiful and lyrical and the title comes from the first verse of a song as recorded above. It recalls the Irish rebellion of 1798 which was brutally put down by the British (as usual).
The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond an Irish High Court judge, alternating between past and present telling the story of his childhood and his later life. Remond is a leading member of Fianna Fail and we also see the changing nature of that party with real history intruding as De Valera and Haughey play minor roles.
The star of this novel is the Irish countryside; the land and the sea of the south-east coast, of Wexford and Limerick. Redmond comes across as a rather cold character and we are taken through a couple of judgments he makes early in the book which make the reader tend to dislike him. His family, especially his wife Carmel, also find him distant and difficult to know.
We follow Redmond from his childhood and his relationship with his father, through courtship and starting out in law to legal eminence and widowhood. There is an epiphany at the end, but it is very late; too late for many of those who know him.
The troubles are in the background, but still a presence and there are some indications of Redmond's family involvements in the uprisings that led to independence. Later as a judge the troubles form a backdrop, but they are secondary to the tale.
Communication is a key theme; Redmond's inability to communicate on an emotional level, his father's struggles to communicate after a stroke and the embarrassment Eamon felt when he was in his father's class at school. The communication issues extend to his children as well. There are other juxtapositions as well. At the Redmond's holiday home the sea is eroding the land; as a judge his decisions relate to the rights of society as opposed to the rights of the individual, Death is also ever present and as a child Redmond describes the death of relatives and the rites and rituals of the Catholic Church (also ever present). Irish history permeates the novel; Redmond is a pillar of the Fianna Fail establishment, his father was a message carrier for the IRA.
Although simply and lyrically written; there is a thread of complexity within because Toibin is examining the republican ideology of the Irish state and the social reality of its population and the tensions with the Catholic Church. It is a critique of the way the Irish state has developed, written in 1992, which seems even more pertinent today. But it is a critique from a position of support with a strong sense of the immersion in history and landscape. It's really rather good. The only problem is that we spend all our time with Eamon Redmond and he isn't that likeable.