The light between oceans

Tom Sherbourne, a soldier returned from the First World War, gets a job as a lighthouse keeper, and is posted to a lonely island off the south-western tip of Australia, where a supply ship calls once in three months. This doesn't sound like the recipe for an interesting or exciting story -- perhaps only as exciting as the log book Tom is required to keep, saying what time he lit the lamp in the evening, and what time he extinguished it in the morning. For the most part one day's entry is much the same as the next, with no unusual occurrences.

On one day when there is an unusual occurrence, however, Tom fails to record it in the log. That was the day a boat washed up on the shore with a dead man and a live baby. There is no sign of the baby's mother. Tom's wife Isabel has just lost a stillborn baby, and sees the new arrival as a substitute. When they return for shore leave everyone knew she had been expecting a baby, and so no questions are asked. But decisions have consequences, sometimes unforeseen consequences, and it is easy to get into a position from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.

I found it a very good book indeed, and well worth reading. Perhaps it was partly as a reaction against the previous book I had read, [b:The girl who disappeared twice|9790128|The Girl Who Disappeared Twice|Andrea Kane|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1300389416s/9790128.jpg|14680171] by [a:Andrea Kane|62844|Andrea Kane|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1246419865p2/62844.jpg], where all the main characters were far too perfect, and never, ever made a mistake, I found this one, with its fallible human characters, a much better read. So I found myself always wanting to read more, to find out what happened.

I found the story well put-together, and well told. At one level it is a love story, though not really a starry-eyed romantic one. It is a sad book, and in some what a tear jerker. In some ways it reminded me of [b:The Caucasian chalk circle|94597|The Caucasian Chalk Circle|Bertolt Brecht|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1348324888s/94597.jpg|89775] by [a:Berthold Brecht], which I only ever saw performed as a play over 40 years ago, and now I want at least to read it, to remind myself of what it was about.

On his return from the First World War to Western Australia, Tom signs up to be a lighthouse keeper. The solitude is what he wants after the horrors of the front. He is lucky to be returning home, so many families have been destroyed, young men taken from their mothers far too early. On his way to the uninhabited island of Janus, he meets Isabel and falls in love. The life on the houses is not for everyone but Isabel wants nothing more to live with Tom and raise a family on the island. One night, a boat is washed ashore, containing a dead man and a baby, very much alive.

Well, this is one of those books that had tears streaming down my face by the end. The story is split into three parts, Tom's life before Isabel, the time spent on the island as a family and finally the gripping section on the mainland which I just couldn't put down. The first chapter draws you in and then, rightly so, the details are filled in afterwards.

I was first attracted to the book with by the lighthouse keeper's story. Nowadays, lighthouses are automated but before it used to be a brave and lonely job. M.L. Stedman gives us just enough information to satisfy curiosity without bogging the reader down. It takes a certain type of trustworthy man to take on the responsibility and this remains an important part of Tom's personality throughout everything that happens.

The central story, however, revolves around the baby, Lucy. Isabel has by this point suffered three miscarriages and is desperate for a child. So desperate that she decides to pass Lucy off as her own child. The setting of post WWI Australia makes this extra potent. There is a passage, very similar to one I quoted from Bereft, also set in the same time and place, about there is no word to describe a parent that has lost a child. Something that so many were suffering at the time. All the families on the mainland have lost someone, does that make Isabel's deception more understandable or worse?

It also deals with the prevalence of xenophobia in the days after the war. Driven on by the helplessness felt by those left behind, foreigners were scapegoats and those who consorted with them just as bad.

The title itself, literally describes the positioning of Janus, between the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean, right on the edge of the world. Yet it also could be used to describe Lucy, the centre of the world for two very different women. Or perhaps it is Tom, torn between loyalty and guilt?

A heartbreaking tale, even if you're not the maternal type. Another astonishing debut for this year.