Lily Brooks-Dalton

An astonishingly well written book. The author deftly weaves her story, needing not to serve an avalanche of words when a concise sentence suffices. I read this as if in a daze, fully immersed in the faltering landscape of a climate-ravaged Florida, populated with real people whose motivations are never really clear. We watch the protagonist, Wanda, as she ages from uncertain youth to confident maturity, discovering what is truly lost and what can truly be found again.

Ember Agni is an archaeology professor whose career has stalled. Following a strong start out in the field, she “settled” for teaching and has labored over a manuscript for several years. She’s lost the little interest she once had in teaching and can’t get over the university’s lack of support for her theories. Ember’s personal life is also a mess, with few friends and a fractious marriage, but she’s unable to accept personal responsibility for her failed career and show more relationships. Then she hears from a long-lost colleague who, it seems, has been on an expedition and found an artifact that supports Ember’s thesis. This event suddenly exposed assumptions I’d made thus far, upended the entire context of the novel, and propelled Ember – and the reader – in an entirely different direction.

Ember turns out to be an unreliable narrator which, combined with the shifting context, had me questioning every plot development while also finding the novel’s messages thought-provoking. I’ll stop there, and leave it to you to discover this compelling read. show less

"Homes could no longer be rigid, immovable things... The blue house was a relic, as all the houses in Rudder were. Structures that belonged to an old paradigm. A series of rooms built upon a series of ideas, none of which had withstood the test of time: the idea that what was here would always be here; the idea that the limestone beneath their feet would go on holding them forever; the idea that the coast was a faithful, unmoving line in the sand. None of this was true anymore. The thing show more was, it never had been."

Climate fiction ("cli-fi") is having a moment. Or has been for a few years now, really. It's not surprising, given the state of the global environment and the very real threat of climate change, which is already affecting so much. [The Light Pirate] is a thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration of what happens when the environment changes faster than anyone expects and forces people to either flee or find new ways of living. It's told through the life of Wanda, born during - and named for - a hurricane in southeast Florida. As Wanda grows, hurricanes become more frequent, infrastructure more dilapidated, and resources scarcer and scarcer. This isn't just a climate horror story, though. It's a very intense and moving look at family and human connection and what lasts when the world as we know it begins to collapse. I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. My thanks to those of you who have sung its praises, especially Laura, whose comments about it finally tipped me over the edge into putting it on my library list.

4.5 stars show less

2017 - I read this book last year and gave it 4 stars. Today, I came across this book again and realized that I loved it so much that I wish I could read it again for the very first time. I have changed my rating to 5 stars.

I won this book through a Goodreads giveaway.

2016 - I was expecting a plot driven book, so when it turned out to be a very character driven story I was a bit thrown off. But I quickly recovered. This was a beautifully told story. I felt it was about loss. How people have show more to lose everything to find what they were missing - and really how very little people actually need. The prose was amazing - I felt completely immersed in the Arctic as I read the vivid descriptions of the landscape. The author did a great job of feeding tiny bits of the story so slowly and easily that I didn't really realize there was a bit of a puzzle being put together. And the visual of Augie's last scene will forever stay in my memory. show less