The Lamplighters: Emma Stonex

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In 1900 three lighthouse keepers disappeared from the Eilean Mor lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides. They were never found and there has been no explanation for their vanishing. In a well constructed novel, Emma Stonex reimagines this event by transposing the time to 1972 and the location to the rugged coast of Cornwall.The result is a multi layered novel that fuses atmosphere and mystery with personal and societal psychology. Normally when people come on, they know they’re not part of it. This is our world they’re in, so they have to toe the line… But there’s an unnatural feeling about Sid. I can’t say what. His voice is high-pitched for a bloke and for someone that big; it’s not entirely like a woman’s, but not far off. It doesn’t sit on him, like it doesn’t belong to him… It’s the descriptions, the language, that I think I will remember most about this novel, that and the eerie evocation of a liminal world where we are poised, characters and readers alike, on the cusp of knowing and of not-knowing, of knowing and of not-wanting-to-know. As a mystery it kept me engaged, though I felt that the ‘aha’ moments didn’t always live up to expectation. We find out the true identity of Dan Sharp, for example, right at the end, but I’m not sure it was worth the wait, given keeping him out of the narrative until that point forces some artificiality into the transcripts that grated a little. The first half of the book dragged quite a bit. We got to know the three lighthouse keepers but we also got to know wives and girlfriends who were left behind after the disappearance.

Book Review: The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex | Theresa Smith Book Review: The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex | Theresa Smith

A mystery is only a mystery for as long as it remains unsolved. The set-up can carry as many intriguing details as you like, but at the whiff of an answer, it loses its power. My challenge with The Lamplighters was to tread the fine line between committing to what I think happened to the keepers, and leaving enough avenues open for readers to decide on their version of events. While The Lamplighters is in many ways a book about the endurance of the human spirit, it is also about this need in us to find resolution, to reach the truth, and ultimately to throw light on dark places. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?

An author long intrigued by the mystery is interviewing the women the lighthouse keepers left behind: Helen, still hopeful for closure and peace; Jenny, a bitter mother consumed equally by grief and guilt; and Michelle, who wishes that her boyfriend’s tarnished name could someday by cleared. Through these interviews, long-buried secrets and personal tragedies are uncovered, filling in some of the gaps in the old story.

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex | Waterstones The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex | Waterstones

The Flannan Isles Vanishing: the power of an enduring mystery and the amazing true story behind The Lamplighters Using the real life tragic event of three lighthouse keepers disappearing from a lighthouse in mysterious circumstances, this novel brings the event forward in time to the 1970s and gives different viewpoints and speculation as to what happened. The author said at the start that these events and people are not related to the real event in any way. I started off not liking the writing style much, I enjoyed the different viewpoints but the long one sided interviews of the characters distracted be from getting in to the story and forgetting I was reading. The mystery certainly did captivate me, there was a lot going on, many different characters, different childhood stories, different versions of events. The personification of the sea and the lighthouse is sensationally authoritative and compelling, with the corporeal imagery, mesmerising in its detail, transposing the written word into a movie. The ocean’s changing temperament, reflective of the human mind and soul, depicts the all-powerful injurious Poseidon; it's paradoxical, melancholic, dramatic beauty at variance with its malevolence. Correspondingly, the ‘Maiden’ with its alluring magnetism is transformed into a 20th century ‘Siren’ of the sea. Do its circular walls represent a cocoon or a writhing python intent on devouring its prey? In this blog post, we will take a closer look at the ending of The Lamplighters and explain what really happened to the three men. We will examine the various clues and hints throughout the book that point to the truth and offer our own interpretation of the ending.

The rating I give a book is almost always decided at the end. Once I’ve finished and the story is complete and all the pieces have fallen into place. But every now and again I will reach a point within a book and know that it is a five-star read. It doesn’t matter what comes after or what came before, you just know, in that moment, that the book you are reading is next level good. That’s what happened in this one for me, I hit a particular chapter late in the book (chapter forty-one) and that was it. Everything fell into place and the prism shifted, all that had been out of focus became crystal clear. And it made me cry, the devastation and the way in which a moment in time can take so much, destroy a love, change the direction of your life, and wound irreparably. Dan shares his manuscript with Helen, revealing that he had written a book about the disappearance and the impact it had on Mortehaven. Thanks is extended to Pan Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of The Lamplighters for review. The Lamplighter is a sentimental novel written by Maria Susanna Cummins and published in 1854, and a best-selling novel of its era.

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex | Waterstones

What really got on my nerves in the first half, however, was the constant – or really very frequent – hinting at dark secrets that would only be revealed in the second half of the book. It became stale very fast to be told by each of the characters that something happened in the past.

I mean, honestly! I’m sure you’d prefer that, but I’m afraid it’s all ridiculous. We’re not in your world now, we’re in mine; and this isn’t a thriller, it’s my life.