Lighthousekeeping - Jeanette Winterson

"Words are the part of silence that can be spoken"

Well, I was excited a few months back to get this book from my local second book shop, one of the few of hers that I hadn't read. And I liked it. It is a fairytale of sorts, a few tales woven together - one of a young girl who is orphaned and goes to live in a lighthouse with Pew, an old blind man who can nonetheless 'see', and his ancestors, and a love and not love story of Dark, an unhappy and conflicted priest who inspires 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', and also of fossils found on the cliffs of the oceanside town, which attract Darwin and his followers. It has lots of similar themes to her other works: dwells on the nature of love (Winterson is a big old softie and has great faith in romantic love as a force of transformation), identity, family ties (not the tv show), the joys of simple living, and the magical power of stories to create the world around us and the meaning the world has for us.

A passage about Dark:
"He grew to dread the hesitant tread on the stairs to his room that overlooked the sea. She carried the tray so slowly that by the time she reached his room the tea had gone cold, and every day she apologised, and every day he told her to think nothing of it, and swallowed a sip or two of the pale liquid. She was trying to economical with the tea leaves.
That morning, he lay in bed and heard the clinking of the tea cups on the tray, as she came slowly towards him. It would be porridge, he thought, heavy as a mistake, and muffins studded with raisins that accused him as he ate them. The new cook - her appointment - baked bread plain, and disapproved of 'fanciness' as she called it, though what was fancy about a raisin, he did not know."

Pew says:
"Don't regret your life, child. It will pass soon enough."

And later, the hero, grown up and in Italy:
"I unlatched the shutters. The light was as intense as a love affair. I was blinded, delighted, not just because it was warm and wonderful, but because nature measures nothing. Nobody needs this much sunlight. Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is as extravagant as a world can be. We are the ones obsessed with measurement. The world just pours it out."