The Authortrek View:
This is a very convincing portrait of
life in a lighthouse in the early 19th century off the Isle of
Man. Lucy and Diya, the lighthouse
keepers, know that their sheltered life on Ellan Bride is under threat, as
their services may no longer be required.
Robert Stevenson (grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson) sends a team of
surveyors to Ellan Bride, as there may be plans to replace the old lighthouse
with a new modern facility. Diya
and Lucy’s three children soon discover what is wrong, and their bid to protect
the only way of life that they have ever known could lead them to tragedy…
Margaret Elphinstone’s characterisation is very good: Ben
Groat is very likeable, and you also warm to the stiff and formal Archie
Buchanan, as he a great sense of adventure and the progressive scientific views
that Diya finds fascinating. Her
characters do grow and develop throughout the novel. Margaret Elphinstone has
also constructed a very strong plot, and it seems for a time that Diya and Lucy
could become very close to the surveying team… However, this is also a very long novel, at over 400 pages,
as Margaret Elphinstone has very clearly researched her subject matter
well. Yet more judicious editing
would have made Light a much pacier read. I did enjoy the novel by the end, but it took some time to
really get going.
Press Reviews: “…the
heart of this novel is a place described so finely and beguilingly that
everyone who reads it will want to go to Ellan Bride” – Helen Dunmore in The
Times
“A rattingly good read” – Sunday
Herald
“Margaret Elphinstone weaves a
sparkling adventure from a few strands of (almost) fact in Light. The hugely inventive Elphinstone takes
a fictitious islet off the Isle of Man as the pretext for an 1830s yarn that fuses
history and fantasy into an exuberantly clever romp, swathed in the mist and
spray of northern seas” - Independent
To find out more about the editor, please visit our Margaret Elphinstone page.
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