Name: Lighthousekeeping
ISBN: 9780007181506

Jeanette Winterson

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.

Lighthousekeeping

Taken in by the enigmatic blind keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse, an orphaned Silver listens as the aged man recounts stories that center around a nineteenth-century clergyman who lived a paradoxical life while experiencing unfulfilled passions, displacement, and betrayal. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Hyshe Thaufeeg

“My life is a hesitation in time. An opening in a cave. A gap for a word. 
These were my stories - flashes across time. 
I'll call you, and we'll light a fire, and drink some wine, and recognise each other in the place that is ours. Don't wait. Don't tell the story later. 
Life is so short. This stretch of sea and sand, this walk on the shore, before the tide covers everything we have done. 
I love you. 
The three most difficult words in the world. 
But what else can I say?”

Taken in by the enigmatic blind keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse, an orphaned Silver listens as the aged man recounts stories that center around a nineteenth-century clergyman who lived a paradoxical life while experiencing unfulfilled passions, displacement, and betrayal. 60,000 first printing.

Melody Izard

I know - I'm "currently reading" 3 books already. But only one of them is fiction - so that's really the only one I count. And it's 892 pages long! I'm enjoying 
  Shadow Country
, but its work to read. This book is play. I'm not very far in Lighthousekeeping. In fact I picked it up just for a little distraction from the weight of Shadow Country, just planning on reading the book jacket and putting it right back down. Then I moved on to the first page ..."My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate." (Aren’t we all?) I started feeling a little breathless and mesmerized and swirly eyed and moved on to the next short section. I'm a sucker for a book broken into short sections and this one just flows from one little tiny section to another. I'm not sure how I'll pace myself between this book, Shadow Country, the Total Immersion swimming book and the Chi running book (which I haven't touched in so long I'm not sure where it is). But I know which one of this reading stack will make me get that calm little smile of pleasure when I'm reading it. 

Review:

I have zigged and zagged about this book: It’s a story within a story within a story. It’s about the power of stories. It’s a fable. It’s poetry. It’s about light and dark. It’s about Jekyll and Hyde. It’s about Pirates and Silver. But finally I have to say it is what it is. It’s whatever you get from it. You can just sit back and enjoy the language and the salty, fuzzy images Winterson creates for you: 
Railings Row is a terrace of houses set back from the road. They reared up, black-bricked and salt-stained, their paint peeling, their brass green. 
Or you can appreciate the subtle humor in the dialog between Pew and Silver: 
Miss Pinch says you came from the orphanage in Glasgow.
There’s always been a Pew at Cape Wrath.
But not the same Pew.
Well, well.
You can count the references to the dark and light, good and bad, this and that, here and there, then and now – and get a rather large number.

You can furrow your brow and wonder when the heck the story took place since there are both references to lighthouse keepers and Starbucks coffee.

Or you can just enjoy Lighthousekeeping like you would a painting or a nature walk or a lovely Pinot Noir from the Oregon coast. And that’s what I finally settled into.

Orphaned and anchorless, Silver is taken in by blind Mr. Pew, the mysterious and miraculously old keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse. Pew tells Silver ancient tales of longing and rootlessness, of journeys that move through place and time, of passion and betrayal. His stories center on Babel Dark, a local nineteenth-century clergyman who lived two lives: a public one mired in darkness and a private one bathed in a beacon of light. Pew's stories are, for Silver, a map through her own particular darkness, into her own story and, finally, into love.

Daryl Houston

An off-beat, weird, lovely book that made me think of The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip and the Series of Unfortunate Events books early on, oddly enough, but that turned toward a more adult mood deeper into the book. It's almost like a long prose poem, maybe.

Lighthousekeeping

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