Rawr Reader,
Fall is less than a month away and I think I'm the only one who doesn't want fall to start just yet. I still want bright summer colors and shorts. Not like Florida will be cooling down anytime before December. I wish summer was a few months longer this year.
No? Only me?
:)
I love finding indie authors or authors not really discussed on Booktube or Bookstagram or Booktwitter. Some of my favorite books were actually relatively unknown/undiscussed authors until they kept writing and the world discovered them. What is it about finding a fantastic author and keeping them to yourself as if you've discovered the next big thing? Of course I want success for my authors so I'm glad they found more readers. Let's see if this author will join their ranks!
As the past that once moored them recedes and disappears, Mary Rose and Harold are delivered from decades of sorrow by the ebb and flow of the waves. Ahead of them, a light shimmers on the horizon, guiding them toward a revelatory and cathartic new engagement with life, and all its wonder.
Reference:
This was a couple years ago but I'm pretty sure I saw the pretty cover in the recommendations list on Goodreads. Judge a book by its cover? Yes. Yes I do.
Review:
The most reminiscent thing about this story is the fact it's a maritime Up. We have an elderly couple (or in Up's case widower) thrown into an adventure they didn't sign up for embarking on said quest aboard their steedy house which holds all the memories the couple had made together since their early marriage days. While Up has a bit more fantasy than LotS, they both travel to far off distances and encounter many challenging and unexpected things. (Because if not, would this be a story many of us would want to hear?)
I will say I jumped into this novel expecting it to have more fantastical elements in it. So disclosure, this is very much a grounded (pun intended) survival story. They are castaways, unconventional in premise, but stranded helpless castaways all the same.
The cast of the story is not large with a good portion of the narrative pingponging between husband and wife. In my opinion, the first half of the book didn't do justice to Mr. and Mrs. Grapes. It was in the latter half that I felt their characters shined. While I understand it's due to the "character growth" they experience over the course of the novel, I think they could have been written better in the early pages. They're from a small island, rather reclusive due to the unfortunate tragedy thirty-five years earlier, however at the beginning the characters speak and are represented rather flatly.
This is only in the beginning though, which I would say push through if you experience the same thoughts as me because the second half of the book is well worth reaching.
Stories on grief are hard to swallow, because even if the action for the reason of grieving is quick, the process following the action is not. Grief can rarely be put into something as simple as words because the feelings from the experiences you share with people who we've lost can never truly be represented even in words. People may do the best they can describing their pain, but rarely can words or physical comfort be a healer to the heart. Even time cannot be measured, as for example the Grapes still grieve thirty-five years later.
Add grief on top of the biggest challenge: an elderly couple having to survive in an environment they were not created for: the open sea. On top of the fact they've never actually left their home island, so surviving is going to be from things they've read/heard while living in the small beach town OR learning spur-of-the-moment. Things are going to go sideways even if this wasn't a novel.
Takeaways from Lights on the Sea isn't hard to gather. Value things that you have because we take for granted the little blessings in our lives. We can't forget to live, not just exist. Life is an adventure and nothing can really prepare us for what is thrown at us, it's how we accept those things if we choose to accept them at all.
The writing isn't anything remarkable. It's the heart of the story that stands out more. It isn't trying to be grandiose. This is a simple story with simple people with a message that should resonate with people who have lost someone and maybe even those who haven't.
Another novel I'd recommend that follows along the lines of struggling through life is a book I read recently The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which handles dark subjects like depression, suicide, but similarly to Lights on the Sea: grief and despondency.
I give this book 3/5 stars.
Quote:
"I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains."
-Anne Frank
My Goodreads:
Next To Read:
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Spoilers:
I touched on this in my review but I was expecting there to be more fantasy in the adventure across the sea. The closest we see it is in the volcanic rock that supports the house. I'm not a geologist so I still don't know if the volcanic material is based off facts or Reina was bending the facts to suit the narrative. Either way, bending laws of physics for stories is a tricky business. I think because Reina kept it to just one aspect of the story (although the biggest turning point)—it worked.
But the actual most unbelievable thing is when Mr. and Mrs. Grapes find a small village in the arctic tundra and they? speak? English? Now that's a stretch. Sure they have traded with travelers but I don't see why a) they would treat the Grapes' so coldly if they could communicate with them in English or b) how the villagers could be so fluent in English. If one day a random old couple were found on my land on the brink of death I wouldn't treat them with such ardent suspicion if my fellow villagers and I have had had contact with others who spoke the same language and therefore the capability to communicate with them.
Until Next Time,
Nicole Ciel