Lighthousekeeping [Hardcover]

Jeanette Winterson's magnificently descriptive, impressionistic novel tells two interconnected stories, each of them asking who we are as humans, how we connect to the past, and what makes our lives worth living. Its modern story focuses on Silver, born in 1959, "part precious metal, part pirate." A young girl without a father, Silver is orphaned at ten and moves into the local lighthouse with Pew, the aged and blind lighthousekeeper, whose family has tended the light in northwest Scotland since 1828. There, she polishes the brasswork, makes the tea, and listens to Pew's stories, some of them historical and some more fanciful, but all of them filled with wisdom and lessons from the past.

The lighthouse, we learn through Pew's stories, was built by the father of Robert Louis Stevenson. In 1878, R. L. Stevenson comes to the lighthouse for a visit and is fascinated by the story of Babel Dark, a local preacher, who becomes the inspiration for Mr. Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dark, we learn through stories, falls in love with beautiful Molly in the early 1850s, then sees her embracing another man, becomes overcome with jealousy, and rejects her. Taking the symbolic name of Lux (meaning "light") when he is with Molly, Dark is unable to control his emotions and becomes a Hyde-like abuser. "He was dark...the light in him never lit."

As the stories of Silver (which reflects light) and Babel Dark develop in tandem, the novel takes on operatic qualities, with the two stories often sounding like duets, one voice light and one dark, singing in counterpoint to each other. As each person seeks fulfillment through love and connection, the cadence of Winterson's writing rises and falls, swirls, and turns in upon itself, with the same themes of creation, connection, and the continuity of life echoing throughout. Winterson's incorporation of the Tristan and Isolde story, along with the visit of Charles Darwin to the lighthouse, expands and further emphasizes the themes.

Both romantic and philosophical, Winterson offers much unique imagery. Pew, for example, is a "silent, taciturn clamp of a man." An Albanian family was "vacuum-packed into a ship," the grandmother, "all sun-dried tomato, tough, chewy, skin split with the heat." Her narrative tempo is flawless, the language elegant, and the characterization consistent with the themes. The end of the book harks back to the beginning, completing a circle and granting new insights into her meanings. A rich novel which the reader will want to read slowly and savor. Mary Whipple

This small novel is a journey of shared illusions, melding the past with myth, overflowing with images: the moodiness of the distant moon, the leaden weight of night, the soft damp mist that fills every crevice of this sea-swept land, a place of dreams and stories on the Scottish coast of the Atlantic Ocean. All is image, blurred pictures of people long dead, a reminder that the past is not so far away.

Silver is the narrator of Lighthousekeeping, her early life anchored to a seaward listing home that finally swallows her mother whole, a father never known. From the drab abode of Miss Pinch in the town of Salt, Silver is sent to live with old blind Pew, the lighthouse keeper of Cape Wrath, "home to gulls and dreams". Pew is a storyteller who teaches her the language of the sea and the soul, relating the tale of Babel Dark, a haunted figure, "not a man for good mornings and good nights", married to a woman devoid of curiosity, his wife nonetheless.

Silver's life is part mistake, part madness, a mélange of stories and impressions, anchored only by her affection for Pew and her security in the lighthouse. The pages are awash with vivid imagination, flying on the wings of language, the magic of myth, weaving stories like webs around the characters. Stories hover like shadows, shifting within the narrative, connected by a filament of truth, Silver's voice, Pew's memory, Dark's anguish and yearning for a life unlived, for years squandered.

Like a dark prince, Babel Dark, he who lived a century or more before, wanders the cliffs in Pew's telling, galloping over the rugged terrain, his heart as wild as the countryside, unredeemed. Like the heroes of myth, Dark's passion is romantic, if embittered, just as Pew's tales are true, though impossible. And Silver takes it all in until the stories course through her body like blood and she cannot live without this precious fluid that rushes through her veins. Even when she must reinvent herself again and again, Silver is buoyed by Pew's "lighthousekeeping" lessons, the stories that sustain the heart.

There are so many remarkable phrases, astute observations and insights that I read slowly, savoring the language, the ideas, evocative seafaring lore and doomed love, all reminders of the heart and its penchant for illogical attachments, for personalization. I gladly follow as Silver navigates through her days, from the mother swept away in the wind, the bed made of chairs at Miss Pinch's, the enchanted years at the lighthouse with blind Pew, Babel Dark's sad saga of unrequited love and sailors lost to a howling sea.

Myth, memory and language combine, orchestrated into a symphony on the edge of the world, where life and death coexist, entwined for eternity. This prose/poetry holds a wealth of images, the warmth of infinite tenderness, bright splashes of sunlight, quiet interludes of thoughtful introspection. Lighthousekeeping is a lesson in reinvention, subtle directions in living the story, listening to the past and welcoming the unknown, the future. Luan Gaines/2005.

Jeanette Winterson never ceases to speak to the very core of me. Lighthousekeeping is a novel that reminds me of her first, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, but completely unique in its own way.

Lighthousekeeping follows the story of orphan Silver as she moves from place to place, first to a lighthouse after her mother dies, from the lighthouse to a hotel, from the hotel to Capri, and from there to places that might only exist in her imagination. Silver is mentored by Pew, the old lighthousekeeper who tells her that stories are light and the only way to make sense of the world, to truly see. The notion of storytelling is at the center of this sweet, moving, and poetic novel.

Jeanette Winterson uses Lighthousekeeping as a playground for the notions of storytelling, light and dark, of personal history and factual history, of the way humans view themselves and their pasts, of the way others view them, of the way others perceive history, fictional and factual, and by the end of the book, she has even included the reader in her journey as a lover of stories. It is a beautiful and engaging and quite simply moved me to tears.

If you are looking for a linear, plot-driven novel, you may be disappointed. The beauty of this novel is in the patterning, the attention to language and theme and the notion of storytelling as a story in itself.

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