Lighthousekeeping
As seen:
By Jeanette Winterson
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1 review
From one of Britain’s best-loved literary novelists comes a magical, lyrical tale of the young orphan Silver, taken in by the ancient lighthousekeeper Mr. Pew, who reveals to her a world of myth and mystery through the art of storytelling.
Motherless and anchorless, Silver is taken in by the timeless Mr. Pew, keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse. Pew tells Silver ancient tales of longing and rootlessness, of the slippages that occur throughout every life. One life, Babel Dark’s, a nineteenth-century clergyman, opens like a map that Silver must follow, and the intertwining of myth and reality, of storytelling and experience, lead her through her own particular darkness. A story of mutability, talking birds and stolen books, of Darwin and Stevenson and of the Jekyll and Hyde in all of us, Lighthousekeeping is a way into the most secret recesses of our own hearts and minds. Jeanette Winterson is one of the most extraordinary and original writers of her generation, and this shows her at her lyrical best. TweetReviews
It's safe to say that Lighthousekeeping received mixed reviews which tended towards the ‘Not Mad About It’ side.
Readers enjoyed the background and incidental information about lighthouses and lighthouse-keeping, and found Winterson's main characters “likeable and contrasting”. It was generally felt that it was a ‘Book of Two Halves’ of which the first was far better than the second – “[it was] good until Pugh left the Lighthouse” – although the battle with the librarians was a highlight!
Less favourable were the opinions about Winterson's lack of respect for the traditional beginning, middle and end linearity of The Novel, although the 'mini-chapter' structure of this brief offering made it an easy read. It was described as, for example: “a non-linear collection of stories”, “cursory and strange vignettes” and “six or seven small ideas [loosely] knitted together.”
Winterson's ambiguous use of pronouns was also regarded as irritating, as was her “self-conscious cleverness”. [CM]
