Wednesday, February 20, 2013

To The Lighthouse

A Very Fine Introduction


It is December 1918 and Tom Sherbourne has just spent four years on the Western Front, when he is offered a job at Byron's Bay Lighthouse.  Although he is cautioned about the hardships, Tom knows, after what he has seen and what he has done in the war, this will be alright. He needs the time away to heal.  The life does seems to be what he needs and so, after considerable correspondence he accepts a second post on Janus Island, off Austraila, all by himself in an extraordinarily remote place. Tom ships out, on the first part of a voyage that will forever change his life, to the port of Partageuse.  From there, he will go to Janus Rock, "linked only by the store boat four times a year, dangled off the edge of the cloth like a loose button that might easily plummet to Antartcia".
As with the last book we read, The London Train, this book is FULL of choices. The characters on every page, are faced with choices, most difficult, some impossible, but somehow, I see these people as sympathetic, and the choices bad, as against the other way around. They seem the true definition of a dilemma. What are your thoughts? What makes the characters seem tender, just within 20 pages?
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1 comment:

  1. Yes, I feel that these characters are likable people who made bad choices. Their lives on Janus at first kind of reminded me of Adam and Eve in Eden, but after their losses and then their desperately bad decision to keep the baby, it will not be Eden any more.

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