Light

A Novel

Margaret Elphinstone

List Price £12.99

This title is Out of Print. It will probably not be reprinted. You may be able to obtain a copy at a library or second-hand bookseller.

"Light, set in the 1830s, brings surveyors, imbued with the confidence of Enlightenment Edinburgh, to build a new lighthouse on a remote island. There they discover the women maintaining the old light have values rooted in other times and places and a different perspective on 'progress'. For the island children the ensuing conflict is both an adventure and an introduction to other worlds, geographical and emotional." - Margaret Elphinstone.

This title is set in May, 1831: a tiny island off the Isle of Man, where a lighthouse provides a harsh living for an unusual family. Isolated from the mainland, they have been able to live away from the disapproving eyes of polite society. But, on the arrival of Stevenson's surveyors, the very existence of their world is threatened.

Reviews

"In Light, Elphinstone's handling of subjective reality is as assured as her control of the objective, historical world. Outwardly, little might seem to happen in the meeting between the men from the world beyond the island and the women of Ellan Bride. Inwardly, emotional landslides are ready to happen." David Robinson, The Scotsman
"Like the surveyor, Elphinstone loves detail and accuracy. She builds her story of Ellan Bride and its tiny population from the rock upwards. The island is meticulously imagined, every place named and known, as if Elphinstone has climbed those cliffs herself, thrust her leather-clad hand into a puffin hole to catch her dinner, brought a yawl into the landing stonne, planted apple trees against a southern wall, shielded young vegetables from the sea wind and polished the lighthouse mirrors until they reflect eight miles out to sea... Elphintone's research is so beautifully absorbed that the island just lives." Helen Dunmore, The Times