“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.