Lighthousekeeping in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 14, 2018 marianne rated it really liked it

Shelves: chez-moi, bookclub

Light and Dark.

A young orphaned girl and an old blind man together tend the lighthouse at Cape Wrath, a wild spot of coast in Scotland. They pass the time telling stories and inventing new stories, but it’s the story of Babel Dark, told by the old man Pew, that weaves its way through this novel like a single long thread through a cloth.

Lighthousekeeping is classic Winterson. She writes in lyrical prose that has been freed of chronology and is instead allowed to run wild on paper, exploring the Light and Dark.

A young orphaned girl and an old blind man together tend the lighthouse at Cape Wrath, a wild spot of coast in Scotland. They pass the time telling stories and inventing new stories, but it’s the story of Babel Dark, told by the old man Pew, that weaves its way through this novel like a single long thread through a cloth.

Lighthousekeeping is classic Winterson. She writes in lyrical prose that has been freed of chronology and is instead allowed to run wild on paper, exploring the themes of love, storytelling, our dual human natures, conflicts forcing us to always choose between good and bad, light and dark, and the inevitability of change. It is a novel woven from the fiber of storytelling, for it is stories, she argues, that are really all that we retain from our vast, infinite experiences. Words on a page act in the same way light brings definition to the dark, stars to the infinite sky, a bright beacon of light to a vast, dark ocean. They are references in the otherwise endless world of the unknown.

Winterson is sometimes too obvious - she employs character names like Dark, Lux, and Silver- but her language is so lovely that I just don’t care. The dark is swept away from a dinner table before the plates are set, and slabs of sunshine are so bright that they are tripped over when a character walks out of her house. Her characters are equally rich. For example, Mrs. Pinch (another not-so-subtle name), a town lady who pops in and out of the tale at regular intervals, is a great bastion of a stern, vile old lady who wonderfully fulfills the part of an ornery, petty villain. By the end, though she had not nudged an inch outside of her foul character, I almost felt endeared to her.

There is much to be praised and loved in this book. The relationship between Silver, the young girl, and Pew, the old lighthousekeeper, is tender, intimate, and sweet. Silver’s earliest memories from her seacliff home are fantastical, like the beginnings of a Dr. Seuss tale. There are also true historical events blended into this tale, such as the history of the Stevenson family that designed and built the lighthouses that still dot the British coastline, and one of their descendants, Robert Louis, the novelist and creator of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I loved learning about this history and took a number of side trips to many a Wikipedia page out of pure curiosity.

The sections in which Silver is an adult, finding love in the Mediterranean islands, felt disjointed from the rest of the stories, and they read as if she were almost an entirely different person. It was hard for me to bridge that gap in time and reconcile this older Silver with her young self. For someone who uses language as the main glue in storytelling, I was surprised at how much this section differed in style and prose. Was this a second story that Winterson tried to weld to the first?

As happens often with Winterson, I have a pretty good experience while I’m reading the book but there is a magical transformation that takes place afterward. The imagery steeps and then flourishes in my mind. I feel increasingly attached to the characters and specific details that I can’t get out of my head (the chicken in the Passion, the magenta cape in The Daylight Gate, the corpulence of the mother in Sexing of Cherry, to name but a few). I often re-read entire chapters in the days after I’ve finished one of her books, and again years later when one catches my eye as I’m skimming a bookshelf.

It’s only a matter of time before I come back to this book again and revisit everything about the lighthouses, the coast, the anguished and twisted Babel Dark, and the mystical life shared by Pew and Silver. In the meantime, I will always think of words on a page as beacons of light dutifully defining our otherwise infinite experiences. ...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Megan rated it really liked it

This novel was absolutely lovely. It's only the second Jeanette Winterson book I've read, but it makes me wonder why I haven't devoured the rest of her stuff. There's just something about her writing style, which in other people's hands might seem too airy, but it really works here. One of the reviews over on Amazon call it a poem in disguise of novel, which I agree with the caveat that unlike most poetry, I like this one. ...more

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