Literature

Mark Greenstock, Sherborne Literary Society

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex, (Picador March 2021), £14.99 (hardback)

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Lockdown is a way of life that profoundly affects mind, body and spirit, whether or not it is embraced willingly by those who endure it. Emma Stonex’s debut venture into literary fiction is likely to become one of the most talkedabout books of 2021. The action takes place on and off the coast of Cornwall’s Land’s End. The author, born in 1983, now lives in Bristol with her husband and two children, but the genesis of the book is the obsession she admits to having with lighthouses – in particular with the historical mystery surrounding the loss of three lighthouse keepers from a sea-girt tower in the Outer Hebrides in 1900, a loss that was never satisfactorily explained. Stonex moves the location to the other end of Britain to the invented small town of Mortehaven (a significant place name in itself), where a small row of separate keepers’ cottages owned by Trident House faces the Maiden Rock light fifteen miles out to sea. Thus, we have two lockdown situations mirroring one another and shifting according to the periods of duty imposed upon each of the men whose wife or partner remains on shore.

‘People will believe anything and, given the choice, they prefer lies to the truth because lies are usually more interesting.’ We are let into the situations of each of the couples and of a substantial list of other characters who play an integral part in the action. The tautness of the narrative and the atmospheric writing are maintained throughout the book, with psychological and supernatural elements interweaving or unfolding through the relationships of the six main participants. Author and reader are engaged in a game of mystery cat-andmouse, as events switch between 1972 (the year of the tragedy) and twenty years later. At every point, the reader is challenged to provide a rational explanation for the happenings but is kept baffled until the blunt and explosive climax. The sea and the Maiden herself are the enduring characters in the book. ‘Wind waves and horses ride, froth and spume then calm and calm; endless sea, rapidly changing mood, whispering and whistling its sad song, soul song, lost song, gone but never for long, up again till it’s rolling, and at the heart of it our Maiden, rooted down like a centuries-old oak, hunkered right into the rock.’ The men who operate the lighthouse have their routines and their preoccupations, but the elements are bigger than they are, and their fragile personalities rebound as the pressure mounts. The contrast between the earthy conversation of the three keepers and the eerie interventions of a different world is driven hard, though the reader sometimes has to work out which side of the probability watershed certain incidents belong. The ending brings hope of a sort, but the sense of loss is palpable. The quality of the writing is considerable, and this author is one to watch.

sherborneliterarysociety.com

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