The Lighthouse - Softcover

Moore, Alison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143187848 ISBN 13: 9780143187844

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 2012

Synopsis

On the outer deck of a North Sea ferry stands Futh, a middle-aged and newly separated man, on his way to Germany for a restorative walking holiday.

After an inexplicably hostile encounter with a hotel landlord, Futh sets out along the Rhine. As he contemplates an earlier trip to Germany and the things he has done in his life, he does not foresee the potentially devastating consequences of things not done.

The Lighthouse, Alison Moore’s first novel, tells the tense, gripping story of a man trying to find himself, but becoming lost.

About this title

About the Author:

Alison Moore was born in Manchester in 1971. Her stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies including Best British Short Stories 2011 . She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize, and for the Scott Prize for her first collection. She won first prize in the novella category of The New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes. She lives near Nottingham with her husband Dan and son Arthur.

Review:

“A haunting and accomplished novel.” - The Independent on Sunday (UK)

“It is this accumulation of the quotidian, in prose as tight as Magnus Mills’s, which lends Moore’s book its standout nature, and brings the novel to its ambiguous, thrilling end.” - The Telegraph (UK)

“Though sparely told, the novel’s simple-seeming narrative has the density of far longer work. People and places are intricately evoked with a forensic feel for mood.” - The Daily Mail (UK)

“Moore’s writing has a superb sense of the weight of memory.” - The Times (UK)

“The Lighthouse is a spare, slim novel that explores grief and loss, the patterns in the way we are hurt and hurt others, and the childlike helplessness we feel as we suffer rejection and abandonment. It explores the central question about leaving and being left: even when it feels inevitable, why does it hurt so much, and why is this particular kind of numbness so repellent to others? The brutal ending continues to shock after several re-readings. ” - The Guardian (UK)

“The Lighthouse looks simple but isn't, refusing to unscramble what seems a bleak moral about the hazards of reproduction, in the widest sense. Small wonder that it stood up to the crash-testing of a prize jury's reading and rereading. One of the year's 12 best novels? I can believe it.” - The Observer (UK)

"[The Lighthouse] deserves to be read, and reread. No laughs, no levity, just a beautiful, sad, overripe tale that lingers in the mind.” - Financial Times (UK)

"What must have gone some way to earning The Lighthouse a place on the longlist, though, is the admirable simplicity of Moore’s prose. Like Futh, its without flourishes, yet beneath its outward straightforwardness lies a hauntingly complex exploration of the recurring patterns that life inevitably follows, often as a consequence of one’s past.” - The Sunday Times (UK)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Canada
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0143187848
• ISBN 13: 9780143187844
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192