This small novel is a journey of shared illusions, melding the past with myth, overflowing with images: the moodiness of the distant moon, the leaden weight of night, the soft damp mist that fills every crevice of this sea-swept land, a place of dreams and stories on the Scottish coast of the Atlantic Ocean. All is image, blurred pictures of people long dead, a reminder that the past is not so far away.
Silver is the narrator of Lighthousekeeping, her early life anchored to a seaward listing home that finally swallows her mother whole, a father never known. From the drab abode of Miss Pinch in the town of Salt, Silver is sent to live with old blind Pew, the lighthouse keeper of Cape Wrath, "home to gulls and dreams". Pew is a storyteller who teaches her the language of the sea and the soul, relating the tale of Babel Dark, a haunted figure, "not a man for good mornings and good nights", married to a woman devoid of curiosity, his wife nonetheless.
Silver's life is part mistake, part madness, a mélange of stories and impressions, anchored only by her affection for Pew and her security in the lighthouse. The pages are awash with vivid imagination, flying on the wings of language, the magic of myth, weaving stories like webs around the characters. Stories hover like shadows, shifting within the narrative, connected by a filament of truth, Silver's voice, Pew's memory, Dark's anguish and yearning for a life unlived, for years squandered.
Like a dark prince, Babel Dark, he who lived a century or more before, wanders the cliffs in Pew's telling, galloping over the rugged terrain, his heart as wild as the countryside, unredeemed. Like the heroes of myth, Dark's passion is romantic, if embittered, just as Pew's tales are true, though impossible. And Silver takes it all in until the stories course through her body like blood and she cannot live without this precious fluid that rushes through her veins. Even when she must reinvent herself again and again, Silver is buoyed by Pew's "lighthousekeeping" lessons, the stories that sustain the heart.
There are so many remarkable phrases, astute observations and insights that I read slowly, savoring the language, the ideas, evocative seafaring lore and doomed love, all reminders of the heart and its penchant for illogical attachments, for personalization. I gladly follow as Silver navigates through her days, from the mother swept away in the wind, the bed made of chairs at Miss Pinch's, the enchanted years at the lighthouse with blind Pew, Babel Dark's sad saga of unrequited love and sailors lost to a howling sea.
Myth, memory and language combine, orchestrated into a symphony on the edge of the world, where life and death coexist, entwined for eternity. This prose/poetry holds a wealth of images, the warmth of infinite tenderness, bright splashes of sunlight, quiet interludes of thoughtful introspection. Lighthousekeeping is a lesson in reinvention, subtle directions in living the story, listening to the past and welcoming the unknown, the future. Luan Gaines/2005.
