Lighthousekeeping

From one of Britain’s best-loved literary novelists comes a magical, lyrical tale of the young orphan Silver, taken in by the ancient lighthousekeeper Mr. Pew, who reveals to her a world of myth and mystery through the art of storytelling. 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 the slippages that occur throughout every life. One life, Babel Dark’s, a nineteenth-century clergyman, opens like a map that Silver must follow, and the intertwining of myth and reality, of storytelling and experience, lead her through her own particular darkness. A story of mutability, talking birds and stolen books, of Darwin and Stevenson and of the Jekyll and Hyde in all of us, Lighthousekeeping is a way into the most secret recesses of our own hearts and minds. Jeanette Winterson is one of the most extraordinary and original writers of her generation, and this shows her at her lyrical best.

Reviews of Lighthousekeeping

'The importance of stories, the urge to create ourselves through stories, is one of Winterson's abiding themes, along with the supremacy, the redemptive power of love.' Daily Telegraph 'A marvelously skilful juggling act of ideas and emotion … Winterson's prodigious talent brings the book alive.' Evening Standard 'The power of Lighthousekeeping is in … the pared-down precision of its language, each word smoothed into a finely polished pebble.' Observer