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Lighthousekeeping

Lighthousekeeping

From The New Yorker
In her sea-soaked and hypnotic eighth novel, Winterson turns the tale of an orphaned young girl and a blind old man into a fable about love and the power of storytelling. Silver, abandoned after the death of her mother in the Scottish town of Salts—a "rock-bitten, sand-edged shell of a town"—is taken in by Pew, a yarn-spinning lighthouse keeper "as old as a unicorn." In the darkness of the lighthouse, he tells never-ending stories about the tortured life of a nineteenth-century clergyman, formerly a minister in Salts, and gradually, it seems, Silver contributes stories of her own. Atmospheric and elusive, Winterson's high-modernist excursion is an inspired meditation on myth and language.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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posted by Tom Jackson @ Wednesday, April 30, 2008