Feb 16, AM. I really enjoyed reading this story. I became so engrossed with the characters and the locations that I didn't really want it to finish. Is there going to be a sequel?
Thank you very much for a marvellous book! Mar 04, PM. Loved the story and everything about it. Wonderful characters I felt like I knew them.
The descriptions were so good that I can truly see, hear and feel where the story took place. It was all about choices. Keep your tissues handy. Amazing first novel. May 02, AM. I could never figure out why my sister dead this many years chose to live her life as the wife of a lighthouse keeper. It was a hard, brutal life especially in East Coast Canadian winter, but she loved it.
After reading this book, I now understand. Thank you for your story. You are an awesome writer and I hope to read more of your work. The life of the lighthouse keeper was the best part of the story. Similar life with forest fire tower watchers; am reading Henning Mankell's "Depths", water, sea involved. The intensity of the interior life engages the reader's own. Some similarities there. May 03, PM.
I loved this book so much, and hope it will become a movie. If it does, may I suggest the actor Benedict Cumberbatch as Tom. While reading your book, I heard Tom speaking in BC's voice. Thank you for such a wonderful book and looking forward to more. Aug 26, AM. This is a wonderful book! I cried my eyes out at the end. I am looking forward to more books by M.
I think that LG's post-Sherbourne life is one of the contrasts that the author mentions in her interview with Goodreads. The novel is about both sets of parents' intense suffering. But LG, the center of it all, ends up with only sketchy memories of that time period and having a wonderfully happy life, with a child of her own.
Aug 27, AM. I still feel the end was anti-climatic and a ducking out by the writer of the suffering of the adoptive mother. Too many emotions left at loose ends.
Aug 28, AM. I imagine that many here have recommended this book to friends and family, as have I. Many members of my circle are unmarried, or married and childless. I hesitate to recommend it to them, but last night I did purchase a copy for my childless stepmother, who goes loves to go on lighthouse tours.
I was wondering how the rest of you felt. I should think it would be a lesson to all to find love where possible, and, if loss occurs, there are many in the world to help, to love.
A great mistake to pine over a lost love, when the world's creatures are there to be cared for. Aug 30, PM. I agree with Mary about the ending of the book. I cannot imagine it being any other way. It would not have been realistic but rather contrived to have Lucy come back to visit before Izzie died.
There is a saying that we reap what we sow and I think this is an excellent example. We make our choices no matter how flawed and live with them the best we can.
A wonderful story that felt like life. This is the book I'll be leading for my book group's discussion this coming week. Nov 09, PM. What a fantastic book! Besides the wonderful and moving story and all the questions it poses, the prose and beautiful use of language throughout made it an absolute delight to read.
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Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. The Light Between Oceans 4. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. As to the second part of your question, the more my own views differed from that of a character, the more satisfying I found it to explore them and to put their point of view as convincingly as possible.
Do all books need heroes and antagonists? Speaking of antagonists, the landscape of Janus Rock and the great sea beyond is awfully unforgiving. Is it based on a real location? No and yes. The island of Janus Rock is entirely fictitious although I have a placeholder for it on Google maps.
Lighthouses are always weighty images in literature. What do they represent to you? And they betoken binary opposites such as safety and danger, light and dark, movement and stasis, communication and isolation—they are intrinsically dynamic because they make our imaginations pivot between them. What kind of research did you do to prepare to write? To prepare , none at all! My research very much followed the story rather than leading it. And I spent time in the British Library, reading battalion journals and other materials from Australian soldiers in WWI: heartbreaking accounts that often left me in tears.
Do you have any useful tips for aspiring novelists? The ethical conundrum arrives in the form of a dinghy washed ashore on an island outcrop in south-western Australia. In its hull lies an unidentified dead man and a mewling baby girl.
The lighthouse keeper's wife, Isabel Sherbourne, interprets the chance wreck as divine benevolence. Tom Sherbourne, who moved to Janus Rock to flee the dark memories of the Somme, understands better than anyone that rules are what divides man from savage. On an island that knows no other human voices, no other footprints and bears silent witness, the couple decide to keep the child, living the fiction of biological parenthood until they can no longer.
Isabel and Tom are the two oceans of Stedman's title drawn together and tested in the cloistered surrounds of the lighthouse, and eventually driven apart by the cold light of reality.
Perhaps it's easier to fool yourself when you cannot see the face of those who are affected by what you do. It's these universal themes as well as the strong evocation of place that captured the interest of no less than nine British publishers.
In the US, Stedman procured a ''high six-figure'' for this, her first novel-length manuscript, a rare book that crosses literary and commercial fiction. I have no explanation for it,'' she says of the bidding war. Stedman interviewed each interested publisher, clear-eyed and stubborn in her intent to find someone who recognised her endeavours to explore life's eternal questions about truth, redemption and the nature of happiness for a broad readership of women and men.
Her belief in the authority of the reader lies partly behind her attempts to maintain relative anonymity in the wake of her mass-market success. Her official biography comprises a single line: ''M. Stedman was born and raised in Western Australia and now lives in London.
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