Lighthousekeeping

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.

With LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING, Jeannette Winterson has written another wonderful love story, woven among historical possibilities in the lives of such as Charles Darwin, Robert Louis Stephenson, Richard Wagner, among other historical figures. The integrity of the story is held together with nautical themes, the greatest being the lighthouse. What I have long been interested with Winterson's work is her beautiful prose that has been delicately transplanted to a contemporary format. Her imagery and diction generally stopped being produced with the literary masters from the nineteenth century, and this may be why her plots often return to those days, yet Winterson's style is not in the least antiquated. If you are a fan of Winterson's body of work then you will surely enjoy LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING, as it is a striking variation of previous efforts, but Winterson through and through. To anyone unfamiliar with Winterson, and interested in a highly polished hybridization of romance and soft-eroticism, I highly recommend LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING as a first soirée.

LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING by Jeanette Winterson is a saga of dualities, of dark and light, wind and sea, an old man leading a double life, a young girl having to start life over. I really like the book's beginning, at a cold lighthouse in northern Scotland with a swirling storm of images that duplicate the wind and sea and give us a definite sense of place. It's set in the late 20th century, but seems out of time -- it always seems ancient. When the narrator, Silver, is orphaned, a family takes her in to teach her lighthousekeeping. Everything's dark except the lighthouse light, and all energy goes toward it. "Our business was light, but we lived in darkness," she says. Every lighthouse has a story, she's told, and as part of her training she has to learn them all. This is a story about storytelling, bringing light to illuminate the darkness, and names continue the metaphor: Silver reflects everything around her; one of the characters is named Dark, and when he takes on an alias, he names himself Lux or light. Naturally, I identified with Silver's love for books. One of my favorite moments was her trip to the library, where an unfriendly librarian wouldn't let her take out books already reserved for other customers. Her clever solution: "I have a list of titles that I leave at the desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue." The best way to describe the -- let me call it "structure," rather than "plot" -- is probably to use the narrator's own words: "This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in." She warns us that "a beginning, a middle and an end is the proper way to tell a story. But I have difficulty with that method." Several times the structure had me scratching my head, and I don't mind admitting that I was a little confused by the insertion of the story of Tristan and Isolde and the tale of a talking bird, seemingly thrown in like snapshots from a totally different book. But it's good, and good literature reminds its readers of other important reads. The author admits that Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" resonates in her book. And parts of LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING, especially in the beginning, remind me of "Ahab's Wife" by Sena Jeter Naslund. I loved that one and strongly recommend it -- especially the first half, in which I was totally absorbed in her adventures at the lighthouse and riding high in the lookout perch of a whaling ship. Winterson's writing is sensual and extraordinary, and it's absolute poetry. Here's an excerpt, with Silver thinking about Captain Scott in the Antarctic: "Not earth-bound any more, he could wing the dogs in a wind-ruff of fur, husky-haloed through two miles or so of gravity, then out, free, barking at the moon, half-wolf, half-tame, going home to the white planet he had seen shining in their orange eyes, paws hock-deep in snow." Holy cow, is that beautiful. Try reading it out loud. The narrator explai

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

Silver is a girl born completely by chance. Her mother had a brief encounter with a sailor, leaving the penniless woman to raise the baby girl in a crooked house tipping into the sea. The house was so slanted that the family dog's legs grew irregularly and they couldn't eat any food that would roll away. Eventually Silver is taken by a hilariously prudish woman named Miss Pinch (a curiously Dickensian touch from an author who has spoken so condescendingly about the work of Sarah Waters) to live with a lighthouse keeper named Pew. From Pew she learns the art of story telling and consequently a way of finding value in her life. Because of her origins and social status Silver is viewed by people like Miss Pinch as worthless or an accident. Through the medium of story telling Silver is able to forge for herself an identity more true than any documented reality. Interwoven with the tale of the novel's central character Silver, is the story of a priest named Babel Dark. He is a fascinatingly divided character, something Winterson has Robert Louise Stevenson cement in English literature. As always, the author's surreal nature of story telling melds with philosophical insights which have the ability to really turn our world upside down. Stunningly beautiful passages add depth to wonderfully quirky tales. Winterson always holds up the importance of storytelling in a way that is ceaselessly inventive and inspiring and makes you want to read on.