4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Lightkeeper's Daughter, January 29, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Lightkeeper's Daughter (Hardcover)
Iain Lawrence does an excellent job of bringing his reader back and forth between what his main character Squid remembers as a child growing up on Lizzie Island and what she feels now, at the age of 17, as she returns to the island to see her parents after she went away to have the baby she became pregnant with at 13.
This book lets readers think about how they saw things as a child and how they realize how their thoughts and ideas have changed as an adult or even young adult as they follow Squid through this realization.
Lawrence's description of the island and the family that lives on this lonely island are captivating. You are instantly brought into a lightkeeper's life with his great imagery, and I thought once I could smell the salt in the air of my living room.
Even though this book was almost 250 pages, it was an easy and fast read that left me wanting to know what had really taken place on the island, what really happened to Squid's brother who mysteriously died before she left the island, and how her daughter, the baby girl she left the island to have, will react to this mysterious and lonely island, as well as her grandparents.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richie's Picks: THE LIGHTKEEPER'S DAUGHTER, October 3, 2002
This review is from: The Lightkeeper's Daughter (Hardcover)
" 'Gather round.' He always said 'Gather round' to start it off. Squid was six or seven.
"Hannah, Squid, and Alastair sat on the rocks as sharp as nails. 'This is the byssus,' said Murray, spreading with his fingers the cottony threads that held the mussel to its rock. 'It's spun by a gland in the animal's foot. He lashes himself in place like Ulysses to his mast.' "He turned the shell in his hand. It was a California mussel, nearly eight inches long. He pointed out the scars along the shell, like patches of white on its deep purple back. 'This fellow,' he said, 'has had some sort of an accident. He might have been wacked by a log.' The scars were deep, and Murray picked at the grooves with his nails. 'The poor brute almost bought it there. Must have got the fright of his life.'
" 'How old is he?' asked Alistair.
" 'Hard to say.' Murray bounced the mussel in his palm. 'He's an old-timer, all right. They grow like weeds in the beginning; more than three inches the first year. But then they slow down, and this one's lived on the island maybe as long as I have.' "
Imagine being Murray and Hannah's kid: growing up on an island, learning how to swim before you walk, working with your parents for a few hours in the morning, and then having the rest of the day for exploring, reading, playing, dreaming, and listening to your father rhapsodize about the mysteries of the plant and animal kingdoms around you. Hop into a glass-bottomed rowboat he's built, paddle out into the water as you observe the creatures below, and then stow the oars as whales breach and blow alongside you.
Hungry? Need a new book? Don't worry! Supply ships come by the island every month so that you've got plenty of food, fuel, supplies, clothes, and books to read.
There is a downside, however.
Throughout the years of growing up, the only human contact that you have outside of your parents and sibling are those monthly supply ships and the voices of the other lightkeepers over the radio system, reporting the weathers every few hours.
THE LIGHTKEEPER'S DAUGHTER is the story of Squid (Elizabeth) and Alistair growing up on remote Lizzie Island, off the coast of British Columbia. It is told looking back, four years after Alistair had drowned, when seventeen year-old Squid brings her three year-old daughter to the island for the first time. It is a mysterious and taut tale about what went so terribly wrong with their idyllic existence on the island.
" 'Humpbacks sing,' said Murray. 'Did you know that?'
"She shook her head.
" 'Each year one of them starts a song. Then others pick it up; they lengthen it and change it.' He spoke softly--he always did--looking out to sea and not at her. 'By the middle of summer they all know the song. They sing in a chorus over hundreds of miles.'
"She leaned her head against his shoulder. She could feel him breathing, and she tried to do what the whales were doing, and time her breath to his.
" 'No one knew,' said Murray. 'Until the war. Then someone put a microphone in the water, hoping to hear submarines. They heard this singing instead. And they didn't know what the hell it was.' "She pressed herself against him. She was shivering, but he didn't notice.
" 'I don't understand it,' he said.
" 'The song?' she asked.
"He shook his head. 'Och, we'll never understand that. I mean how men could kill them.'
" 'No,' she said.'
"He sighed. 'They're wonderful things, whales are. They're miraculous.' "
This is a story that is haunting and bittersweet, a setting that is utterly entrancing. Murray has no use for civilization--he hasn't been off of the island since leaving school and taking over from the last lightkeeper. Hannah washed up on the shore a couple of decades after Murray arrived. The kids soon followed. Bit by bit the two children and their mother reveal the secrets of their lives with Murray, a barnacle of a man who has a life or death grip on the island. My own head will remain cemented to Lizzie Island and these characters for some time to come.
Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and Poignant, January 30, 2003
This review is from: The Lightkeeper's Daughter (Hardcover)
Set on a remote island on the western coast of Canada against a backdrop of wicked storms, anguished memories, and vast loneliness comes the beautiful and poignant story of 17 year old Squid and her family, the Mc Craes. Though much of the story is about Squid, the story is told mostly from the perspective and memories of Squid's mother Hannah, as the reader is drawn into the world of separation, and reunion.
Growing up on the remote Lizzie Island and as a lightkeeper's daughter, Squid could swim before she could walk, and had only met 50 people in her entire 17 years. Squid returns to the island after three years separation with her three year old daughter Tatiana in tow. The reunion is painful, and redeeming, much of it bringing back memories of accidental or perhaps suicidal drowning of Squid's brother Alistar, and of Squid's pregancy from a lone kyaker when she was 13 years old. Much of the conflict in this story stems from the death of Alistar and how each member of the family deals with the regret, guilt, and loss, and from the difficulties and beauty of living daily with isolation and often violent nature.
I loved this book, and think it would be a wonderful read for the older thoughtful teen reader. I thought the rating as a 14+ teen novel was misleading as the slow poetic pace and thought provoking nature of the book might not capture the attention of the average teen. But, the gift in this book for me was truly the beautiful langugage Lawrence weaves throught out the story...The descriptions of the sea and rugged beauty of the island were truly captivating.
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