The Heather Blazing
The Heather Blazing is the 1992 novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It was the writer's second novel and allowed him to become a full-time fiction writer. The intensity of the prose and the emotional tension under the colder eye with which the events are seen, provided him with a faithful readership both at home and abroad. It won the 1993 Encore Award for a second novel.
 First paperback edition cover | |
| Author | Colm Tóibín. |
|---|---|
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Picador |
Publication date | 11 September 1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 224 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | 0-330-32124-2 (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 26978348 |
| 823/.914 20 | |
| LC Class | PR6070.O455 H4 1992 |
Plot summary
The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond, a judge in the Irish High Court of the late twentieth century Ireland. It reconstructs his relationships with his wife and children through his life and the memories of a childhood marked by the death of his father. The County Wexford landscape and the death of the father are the narrative material, which Colm Tóibín would revisit again in The Blackwater Lightship.
The novel takes its title from a line from the song "Boolavogue", specifically "a rebel hand set the heather blazing".
The novel also plots the development of Fianna Fáil from the austere republicanism and style of Éamon de Valera to the corruption of the Charles Haughey era.
It has been said that this novel made Tóibín the heir of John McGahern. Amongst Women, a book by McGahern, has similar atmosphere to this book.