The Lamplighters: Emma Stonex

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I like the idea of that shell being returned to the sea. All that travelling over millions of years, all that effort, rolling in the grind of the prehistoric wash, only to be spat up on a distant shore…’ The atmosphere that Stonex so cleverly creates is why The Lamplighters reads as more than a mystery novel. The Maiden exists in that liminal spot between land and sea, and the novel exists in a similar space where the worlds of the natural and supernatural dissolve into each other. Bill tells us, “there are keepers who stay so long on the towers they start to hear mermaids.” Do the keepers, driven mad through solitude, imagine the mermaids? Or are their senses sharpened so they can hear better than we can? Helen believes the men’s disappearance is a terrible accident covered up by their employers, Trident. Jenny suspects a strange supernatural event. Who is right? How can we know? The book does not exclude any version of events but treads the line between them with, for the most part, the lightest of footfalls. Seabirds appear like omens, there’s a Silver Man who could be a drug-dealer but is reported to occupy two places at once. Always we have a sense that if you turn around fast enough you might catch sight of … something … out of the corner of your eye.

The Lamplighter - Wikipedia The Lamplighter - Wikipedia

There is one part that felt needlessly added and didn’t fit with the character of Vince, although Vince had his problems I can’t believe he made a little girl watch as he set fire to her dogs kennel, killing the poor dog and obviously traumatising the girl. This seemed needlessly gratuitous and out of character. But when they disappear without a trace, leaving behind only a cryptic message in the lighthouse logbook, the mystery begins. Human beings are drawn to mysteries. Something in us leans towards the unknown, half afraid, half enthralled, always desperate to discover. Throughout history, people have sought other people’s stories – it’s what makes us social creatures, wanting to understand what happens to our fellow species and why. In the case of three lighthouse keepers stationed on Eilean Mòr, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, who disappeared from their post without trace in December 1900, such answers have never surfaced. A hundred and twenty years later, what happened to them remains an enigma. Did these men drown in a heavy sea? Were they seized by forces earthly or otherwise? What impact did extreme isolation have on their states of mind? I also find it unrealistic in a story that everyone is unhappy, unfaithful, loves another, doesn’t love the one they’re with, loves the one they’re with but they love another, grieving for a loved one… literally everyone was unhappy. Also the culmination saw three people considering murder at the same time, is that likely? I also felt the end, not only with its supernatural element seemed unlikely, surely they would have hit the base of the lighthouse rather than the sea? It was also unrealistic that blood and a struggle could have been totally cleaned up, forensics would have found evidence. How sad the only planted evidence they found pointed to the innocent person. Sharks are] cool torpedoes of blubber, sliced at the gills, equipped with teeth. Fat and teeth, that’s the thing. Needles in a bowl of curd.’

The characters here are so well drawn, the reader develops an emotional connection with them early on so right from the first chapter you are absolutely hooked in to this narrative. Helen mentions that they try their best to make a difference, to keep the lights shining in the darkness. This sentiment encompasses both the literal lighthouses and the figurative light that people try to bring into each other’s lives. Three lighthouse men have disappeared whilst on shift at the lighthouse, the building is empty and they have vanished without a trace.

Flannan Isles Vanishing: the power of an enduring mystery The Flannan Isles Vanishing: the power of an enduring mystery

Anyone who grew up in Scotland in the 70s and early 80s can tell you about the lighthouse keepers of the remote Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides in the early 20th century. The story of the three men who settled down to eat only to seemingly vanish into thin air haunted my childhood – and it would appear that of Emma Stonex too. The author’s first novel under her own name transports the location to the close-knit but still remote Cornish coast and updates the action, plausibly, to 1972 – an era when mobile phones don’t exist – before flashing forward to 1992 when an investigative journalist believes he has uncovered the truth but needs the men’s very different widows and girlfriends to prove it.BUT-if you are intrigued by this real bit of history and would like to read this author’s idea of what might have occurred-this story is fascinating, though a bit DRY in its story telling style. With all the elements of a gothic novel, this compelling and haunting narrative -with its complex, enigmatic characters, was inspired by the actual event in 1900 of the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on the remote Flannan Isles. ‘The Lamplighters’ is adeptly partitioned with the disappearance of the keepers occurring in 1972, and an investigative reporter’s attempt to unearth the truth beginning in 1992; with the narration floating between the potent characters, and the action emanating from parallel time frames, the plot could quite easily have become fractured. Remarkably, Stonex remains in command of each critical, entangled thread as she seduces readers into her intricate web of intrigue and suspense; not once does she tolerate complacency as the labyrinths of loss, deception and intense psychological trauma are explored.