This was my first book by this author. It's a novel about storytelling: stories, stories within stories...and is in essence a story about love. It was a little difficult to understand in places, as it jumps around in time - I don't have much experience with non-linear plots! But it's beautifully written - Winterson has a way with words. I left many slips of paper inside as I read, to mark pages where a particular passage or turn of phrase moved me.

"Well then, this past would have to be dragged into the future, because the present had buckled under me, like a badly made chair."

"In the fossil record of our existence, there is no trace of love. You cannot find it held in the earth's crust, waiting to be discovered. The long bones of our ancestors show nothing of their hearts. Their last meal is sometimes preserved in peat or ice, but their thoughts and feelings are gone."

"But today, when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love - all love - love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a café. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do."

An opening page of this novel contains two quotes:
'Remember you must die'
Muriel Spark
'Remember you must live'
Ali Smith

I'd recently read Hotel World, from which the second quote is taken. I just love synchronicity :-)
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Amazon Book Description
Publication Date: April 3, 2006
Lighthousekeeping tells the tale of Silver ("My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal, part pirate."), an orphaned girl who is taken in by blind Mr. Pew, the mysterious and miraculously old keeper of a lighthouse on the Scottish coast. Pew tells Silver stories of Babel Dark, a nineteenth-century clergyman. Dark lived two lives: a public one mired in darkness and deceit and a private one bathed in the light of passionate love. For Silver, Dark's life becomes a map through her own darkness, into her own story, and, finally, into love.

One of the most original and extraordinary writers of her generation, Jeanette Winterson has created a modern fable about the transformative power of storytelling.

In the bookcase.

Released for elstaplador’s LGBT History Month Challenge.

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