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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In 1973, Glasgow-born Hill impulsively dropped out of art school to train as a lighthouse keeper at a series of remote outposts off Scotland's coast. He was, he recalls, the very image of the teenage baby boomer: longhaired, scruffy, dragging his rock 'n' roll tapes around everywhere. Yet he appears to have enjoyed himself immensely, spending weeks in close quarters with a handful of much older men, listening to their anecdotes and learning how to cook huge meals. The biggest problem with this loose, digressive account is that that's pretty much all they did other than keep the lights on. There are some amusing scenesâ€"one lighthouse crew's obsession with the televised Watergate hearings; a game of Scrabble in which only nautical terms are allowedâ€"but the pace is otherwise slow moving. While that sometimes makes for remarkable character studies, the narrative is burdened by Hill's grandiose faith in the significance of his generational moment. As a result, the memoir reads more like an elegy for his lost youth than one for the lighthouse keepers who would soon be replaced by automated technology. Furthermore, American readers will struggle to make sense of the references to 1970s BBC programming, which serve as hooks to describe nearly everyone Hill meets (the book was published in the U.K. last year). At least it's easy to grasp the Scots dialect; the gruff men who speak it hold much of the tale's vitality. In contrast, Hill's more direct efforts to wax charmingly nostalgic sound too often merely pretentious, like the sort of pompous middle-aged prattle Hill would have fled from if he were still 19.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The New Yorker
In 1973, Hill, a hippie art student from Glasgow, anticipated that his stint as a summer lighthouse-keeper off the west coast of Scotland would be a time for writing haiku and painting seascapes. Real duty, he learned, is more like living inside a working clock—keeping watch by a relentless schedule, with sleep parcelled into shifts of a few hours and conversations carried on in fifteen-second intervals between foghorn blasts. His narrative gives voice to the old-salt Scotsmen who tend the lights, as they recount murderous legends or boil over while watching the Watergate hearings. Hill's final posting proves the most daunting—a lighthouse on a narrow strip of lava in the Outer Hebrides that is reachable only by helicopter. High seas sometimes submerge the entire island, and Hill's last night there is complicated by the arrival of half a million migrating birds, illuminated by the beacon and pecking at the windows.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
In 1973, Glasgow-born Hill impulsively dropped out of art school to train as a lighthouse keeper at a series of remote outposts off Scotland's coast. He was, he recalls, the very image of the teenage baby boomer: longhaired, scruffy, dragging his rock 'n' roll tapes around everywhere. Yet he appears to have enjoyed himself immensely, spending weeks in close quarters with a handful of much older men, listening to their anecdotes and learning how to cook huge meals. The biggest problem with this loose, digressive account is that that's pretty much all they did other than keep the lights on. There are some amusing scenesâ€"one lighthouse crew's obsession with the televised Watergate hearings; a game of Scrabble in which only nautical terms are allowedâ€"but the pace is otherwise slow moving. While that sometimes makes for remarkable character studies, the narrative is burdened by Hill's grandiose faith in the significance of his generational moment. As a result, the memoir reads more like an elegy for his lost youth than one for the lighthouse keepers who would soon be replaced by automated technology. Furthermore, American readers will struggle to make sense of the references to 1970s BBC programming, which serve as hooks to describe nearly everyone Hill meets (the book was published in the U.K. last year). At least it's easy to grasp the Scots dialect; the gruff men who speak it hold much of the tale's vitality. In contrast, Hill's more direct efforts to wax charmingly nostalgic sound too often merely pretentious, like the sort of pompous middle-aged prattle Hill would have fled from if he were still 19.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The New Yorker
In 1973, Hill, a hippie art student from Glasgow, anticipated that his stint as a summer lighthouse-keeper off the west coast of Scotland would be a time for writing haiku and painting seascapes. Real duty, he learned, is more like living inside a working clock—keeping watch by a relentless schedule, with sleep parcelled into shifts of a few hours and conversations carried on in fifteen-second intervals between foghorn blasts. His narrative gives voice to the old-salt Scotsmen who tend the lights, as they recount murderous legends or boil over while watching the Watergate hearings. Hill's final posting proves the most daunting—a lighthouse on a narrow strip of lava in the Outer Hebrides that is reachable only by helicopter. High seas sometimes submerge the entire island, and Hill's last night there is complicated by the arrival of half a million migrating birds, illuminated by the beacon and pecking at the windows.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
In 1973 I worked as a lighthouse keeper on three islands off the west coast of Scotland. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
lobster creels, fellow keepers, fog signal, light chamber, yellow notebooks, other keepers, donkey jacket, lighthouse keeper Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Ailsa Craig, Jim Codey, Finlay Watchorn, Perth Road, George Street, Greenfield House, Jack Starr, Lachlan Fairbairn, Big Tam, Tavern Bar, Ben Gunn, Byres Road, Chicken Rock, The Times, Bell Rock, Blue Peter, Flannan Isles, Golden Virginia, New York, Orkney Islands, Statue of Liberty, White House, Captain Haddock, James Bond, Tay Bridge New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In 1973 I worked as a lighthouse keeper on three islands off the west coast of Scotland. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
lobster creels, fellow keepers, fog signal, light chamber, yellow notebooks, other keepers, donkey jacket, lighthouse keeper Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Ailsa Craig, Jim Codey, Finlay Watchorn, Perth Road, George Street, Greenfield House, Jack Starr, Lachlan Fairbairn, Big Tam, Tavern Bar, Ben Gunn, Byres Road, Chicken Rock, The Times, Bell Rock, Blue Peter, Flannan Isles, Golden Virginia, New York, Orkney Islands, Statue of Liberty, White House, Captain Haddock, James Bond, Tay Bridge New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 29
books:
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- Treasure Island by Louis Robert Stevenson on page 5, page 138, and page 141
- Treasure Island (New Windmills) by Robert Louis Stevenson on page 5, page 138, and page 141
- Treasure Island (Signet Classics) by Robert Louis Stevenson on page 5, page 138, and page 141
- Treasure Island by Robert L Stevenson on page 5, page 138, and page 141
- Treasure Island (Classic Library) by Robert Louis, III Stevenson on page 5, page 138, and page 141
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