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Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson
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Lighthousekeeping (original 2004; edition 2006)

by Jeanette Winterson (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,847569,072 (3.7)114
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 ties that bind and of the slippages that occur throughout every life. One life, Babel Dark's, opens like a map that Silver must follow.… (more)
Member:janeajones
Title:Lighthousekeeping
Authors:Jeanette Winterson (Author)
Info:Harvest Books (2006), Edition: First, 232 pages
Collections:Your library, Kindle
Rating:****
Tags:21st c., British, Scotland, fiction, novel, storyteller

Work Information

Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson (2004)

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» See also 114 mentions

English (47)  Catalan (2)  Swedish (2)  Spanish (1)  Norwegian (1)  French (1)  Danish (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (56)
Showing 1-5 of 47 (next | show all)
Sometimes I read a novel and can't help suspecting that it was born in some kind of drunken parlour game where friends write down random ideas on a piece of paper and the author is challenged to write a novel tying together all the plot elements she draws out of a hat. "Robert Louis Stevenson, Tristan & Isolde, Capri, adoption, Great Exhibition, Charles Darwin, Death in Venice, car-wash, ...," it must have gone on this occasion.

Whether or not that's what really happened, the result is an ingenious pastiche of the postmodern-Victorian-novel genre (think French lieutenant's woman or Possession), opening with the memorably Chaplinesque image of the narrator and her mother living in a house built on such a steep slope that they weren't allowed spaghetti or peas. It's great fun and runs at a lightning pace, we get bombarded with casual references to Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll, and much else, and there's a semi-serious underlying idea about the importance of stories in helping us to make sense of an impossibly dynamic universe. ( )
1 vote thorold | Nov 11, 2023 |
Unparalleled. The only author I can compare to Jeanette Winterson is Jeanette Winterson. She meets Borges and Garcia Marquez and Rhys and Kingsolver at a nexus of magic and pathos, and she bests them all. ( )
  jscape2000 | Feb 3, 2023 |
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. ( )
  dllh | Jan 6, 2021 |
Although beautifully written, the story is hard to follow. ( )
  Chrissylou62 | Aug 1, 2020 |
Another story about storytelling. Winterson's books usually slide through my mind like fine silk leaving only an impression of strange beauty. Another orphan finds what family she can with a dog and a blind lighthousekeeper and stories found in the lighthouse. The dominant story is of a 19th century man named Babel Dark. Darwin and Jekyll and Hyde and seahorses and how love batters its way in. (August 19, 2005) ( )
  cindywho | May 27, 2019 |
Showing 1-5 of 47 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (15 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Jeanette Wintersonprimary authorall editionscalculated
Polman, MaartenTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sainio, MerviTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
‘Remember you must die’

Muriel Spark
‘Remember you must live’

Ali Smith
Dedication
For Deborah Warner
First words
My mother called me Silver.
Quotations
There is so little of life, and it is fraught with chance. We meet, we don't meet, we take the wrong turning, and still bump into each other. We conscientiously choose the ‘right road' and it leads nowhere.
There's a booth in Grand Central Station where you can go and record your life. You talk. It tapes. It's the modern-day confessional—no priest, just your voice in the silence. What you were, digitally saved for the future. Forty minutes is yours. So what would you say in those forty minutes—what would be your death-bed decisions? What of your life will sink under the waves, and what will be like the lighthouse, calling you home?
The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.
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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 ties that bind and of the slippages that occur throughout every life. One life, Babel Dark's, opens like a map that Silver must follow.

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