Review: The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter
She has me sussed. A closet softie. Tears to be prompted by cleverly written sentences. She's getting good at it, six books in.
And I'll bet that all who read this latest one will never again look at a lighthouse in the same way. Even if the heroines of The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter are no longer on duty, tending assiduously to the wicks of their Fresnel-lensed lights and levels of fuel.
Automation, and the global positioning satellite system, have taken away the romance of the beacons which once were the only way those who plied the seas could work out where they were in relation to often deadly shores.
Which is probably why Hazel prefers to write about the times before her own, where there are real life romantic stories on which she can base her fiction. Like the real Grace Darling who became famous, unwillingly, on a North Sea coast isle in 1838 when she helped her lighthouse keeper father rescue some of the souls shipwrecked in a storm.
Grace became a national icon for courage. But she also became the subject of news mongers who wanted something extraordinary, and an object for locals who found in her an exploitable source of income.
Taking Grace's story as a starting point, Hazel Gaynor has further honed her skill in bringing back to life people long gone. She brings us intimately close and personal to what might have been Grace Darling's daily thoughts and life, her loves and yearnings and sadnesses, and above all her sense of duty. We get to know, and to like or dislike as appropriate, those in Grace's life circle, as if we were there with her.
And we get a fascinating insight into the workings of the lighthouse when it depended on people and people depended on it. It was more than a beacon to guide sailors safely. It was a home for families, a place of vocation for generations of keepers. And from time to time, a sanctuary for the distressed.
But Hazel works in parallel universes, in this case a hundred years apart, and brings her tale full circle in 1938 with the Irish great great grand-daughter of one of those rescued by Grace needing her own place of sanctuary. After she reaches it, on the eastern coast of the United States, she also gradually discovers an unexpected history of herself.
The people in this book are each thinking and experiencing their own stories, and telling them to us in their own thoughts and voices. It is a complicated written weave, and also one where the languages a century apart are different. Hazel has the ability to write in those differences without disrupting the overall narrative. It is one of the attractions of her books to me, who — as I've often said — does not normally read this kind of fiction.
The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter is yet another fascinating insight into different times and people. But the underpinning thread is that, while times and people may outwardly change, life doesn't.
I've managed, I think, to say what I want without giving away the actual story plot. Go down to Woodbine and buy the book and find that for yourself. You will enjoy it.
And yes, a box of tissues might be useful ...
