Customer Reviews

The Lighthouse at the End of the World: A Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wow! All these good reviews. Frankly I thought the narrative was a mess. It only evades one star because Marlowe does, indeed, give us a wonderful examination of the Poe's marriage and "real life".The biographical aspects are well done. The point, I suppose, was to view inside Poe's mind at the end. Frankly it was so confusing the tragic end of Poe gets hopelessly lost in the prose.

The rest? The first half was much easier to follow than the second half. Honestly I finished the book because of the good reviews and because I have this thing about finishing books I have started. It was like reading jabberwocky. This is not a long book but I fought to finish it. Sorry I did not like it at all.

Great book. A bit slow at first, hard to get into I think. As you read it more though, the book begins to develop around you and draw you in. I enjoyed it greatly. Being able to walk in Poe's footsteps, see through his eyes, you begin to wonder and imagine that you are Poe. The sheer historical and visual aspect of it is enough to capture the imagination and intrigue of anyone.

I found the book hard to follow, and yet by the end I was strangely drawn to it - its bewildering account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe. I plan to hang on to my copy and reread it later, if anything, just to figure out the plot(s).

The previous reviewer had it exactly right; this novel is a mess. It is a perfect example of what Poe himself called "obscurity for obscurity's sake." The "fantasy" segments of the book are simply unreadable--impenetrable, meaningless hallucinatory sequences that do nothing but bore the reader.

The "biographical" portion is not much better. It strays way too far from the known facts about Poe's life to make this part of the book involving or believable. I give Marlowe some credit for being one of the few writers willing to give Poe's wife Virginia a personality, (albeit a somewhat irritating one.) Poe's marriage is presented as a "normal," loving partnership, but their relationship takes a rather sick turn (I'm surprised no review of the book mentions this.) Virginia, who has been unable to have marital relations since she fell ill with consumption, claims she wants Poe to take mistresses--and wants to know all about it! The love-starved Poe visits a brothel--with no, uh, results--and later abruptly enters into an almost-adulterous affair with the airheaded, predatory poetess Fanny Osgood. This is a particularly incongruous and repellent storyline that does not match any account anyone ever gave of his relationship with Osgood. It even culminates with Virginia turning to forgery, for the love of Pete.)

It's a shame, really. Marlowe had some writing talent, and if he had not tried so excruciatingly hard to create "art," and had simply stuck to reality and written a straight biographical novel about Poe, he might have come up with something genuinely compelling. As it is, however, reading "Lighthouse" gives you neither insight into the real Poe or an enjoyable fantasy. In short, it's a complete waste of time.

(A Postscript: Does anyone else remember an old "Rockford Files" episode that made frequent mention of a novel called "Freefall to Ecstasy?" It was the first thing I thought of when I finished with this book.)

I'm surprised that none of the other reviewers seem to have gotten the same sense that I did from this book -- that it is the (fictional, of course) narrative of what passed through Edgar Allan Poe's mind as he lay dying. You know how they say when you're dying, your life flashes before your eyes? Well, this is what I think could have possibly gone through Poe's mind in those four days between the time he was found, delirious, on a Baltimore street, and when he died in the hospital. Of course it doesn't make sense and it's not linear. It's like those dreams you have in which someone from your high school thirty years ago appears side by side with a guy you met yesterday. I thought it was a brilliant, nightmarish story.

Anyone familiar with the work of Edgar Allan Poe or the unforgiving world of slander, misfortune, and ultimate tragedy that his actual life took place in will immediately recognize a labor of love and compassion for this tragic artist of the macabre in Marlowe's powerhouse work of historical fiction. This puzzling and enigmatic mindf**k employs every single tactic to give Poe the man a more substantial face and soul, two attributes he has sorely lacked for over a century now.

While I still can't claim to have understood the entire narrative, this is undeniably the sort of creative fiction which is absolutely impossible to put down. There is not one character, one attribute of Poe's work or life that is not worked into a drama, whether real or imaginary (often it is hard to tell the difference.) C. Auguste Dupin, Poe's predecessor to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, smokes meerschaum and wears a pair of emerald green glasses while trying to decide whether his most prized subject--Poe himself--is merely delusional or correct in his assessment
of the cosmos' potential destruction at the hands of a tribe called "the Yaneek". One single shard of a kaleidoscope broken at the hands of the author himself as a child may or may not determine, along with this tribe, the fate of humanity, so invested is it with the power of imagination and enlightenment.

The death of Poe's only true love, Virginia, is given full and at times unbearably heartwrenching treatment by Marlowe. Poe's subsequent madness and (seeming) death by cholera is given equally moving and horribly realistic treatment.

I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to try to explain this book; I can only say that I would like it somehow to be the first and last word on it's subject, since a million annoying biographies filled with monotonous statistics and dates could never communicate the haunted greatness of
Poe as this book does.

The late Stephen Marlowe made a name for himself as a pulp fiction writer. Later in life, Marlowe forayed into literary fiction, penning artful biographical fiction. Lighthouse at the End of the World, is one of Marlowe's finest, most intellectually-challenging books. It is a fantasy fiction portrait of Edgar Allan Poe revolving around the yet-unsolved mystery of Poe's death. In the first 200 pages of the novel, Marlowe combines historical fiction and fictional biography with fantasy and mystery. Interspersed in an account of Poe's life, narrated in a fairly linear and cohesive fashion by Poe himself, are surreal, fantasy episodes narrated by Poe doppelgangers.

In the final third of the book, there is a sharp break in the already fractured, multi-layered narrative. Fantasy takes over completely as Poe descends into the alcohol, opium and exposure-induced encephalothopy that killed him. C. Aguste Dupin emerges out of the blue to investigate Poe's disappearance and strange illness.

Although this book is inordinately difficult to follow, Marlowe's writing is very beautiful and unique (the adjectives "kaleidoscopic" and "shimmering" come to mind). This book has an overall feel to it which is reminiscent of a Jean Cocteau film. The intrigue and beauty of Marlowe's writing manage to carry the reader through the difficult parts to the final three chapters where Marlowe ties the story together. The ending, by the way, is quite bizarre and surprising.

The most fascinating aspect of this novel, by far, is the metamorphosis in Marlowe's writing between the first few chapters and the end of the book. As the story proceeds, Poe starts to become very much like his own fictional characters. Poe alternately becomes a kind of William Wilson, Arthur Gordon Pym and Roderick Usher. All the while, Marlowe's writing slowly, subtly but surely takes on Poe's distinctive style, complete with elipses, italics, anachronisms and footnotes where the narrator directly addresses the reader. It is very unnerving and effective. Marlowe's masterfully-crafted writing earns this novel a five-star rating in spite of the difficult and complex plot.