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The Lighthouse
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.
184 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2012
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4477 people want to read
About the author
Alison Moore
94 books110 followers Born in Manchester in 1971, Alison Moore lives next but one to a sheep field in a village on the Leicestershire-Nottinghamshire border, with her husband Dan and son Arthur.
She is a member of Nottingham Writers’ Studio and an honorary lecturer in the School of English at Nottingham University.
In 2012 her novel The Lighthouse, the unsettling tale of a middle-aged man who embarks on a contemplative German walking holiday after the break-up of his marriage – only to find himself more alienated than ever, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.
She is a member of Nottingham Writers’ Studio and an honorary lecturer in the School of English at Nottingham University.
In 2012 her novel The Lighthouse, the unsettling tale of a middle-aged man who embarks on a contemplative German walking holiday after the break-up of his marriage – only to find himself more alienated than ever, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.
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March 27, 2017
This is a story about emptiness; it is a story about how people long for what they do not have, and look for it everywhere and in everyone: it’s a story about empty people and empty lives. And in this Moore provides an excellent case study in the characterisation of Futh, a man who embodies an extreme sense of loneliness.
It’s also about futility and the fruitless nature of such longing. Instead of living in the now and making the most of what we do have the human mind always seeks such impossibilities. This creates a stream of consciousness like feel to some parts of the book. Futh may pick up an item or smell a certain smell and he is drawn back in time, ultimately, relaying his memories and demonstrating how they constantly reassert themselves in his present state. He is unable to move on and escape from the past so he can get on with his life. He has gone on holiday to get over his break-up with his wife, but instead spends the entire trip reminiscing about times gone by.
Moore chronicles the life of this sad character, a man rejected by his farther and abandoned by his mother who still seeks some sense of parental love long into his forties. He never got over these early problems in his developmental stages; thus, they are carried through to adulthood. At times it felt like Moore based her character, and his psychological issues, on the Freudian stages of psychosexual development. Futh has developed a strong sense of oedipal complex; he looks for his mother in other women, and especially his wife. She reminds him of his early memories, and he is drawn to the scent that activates his memories. It’s why she became frustrated with him, which isn’t overly surprising.
In his pocket Futh carries the lighthouse, a miniature perfume bottle holder that is his last physical link to his mother. He rubs it in his pocket when he gets nervous. He carries it around with him everywhere and seeks comfort in the caressing of it. It embodies her, a sense of warmth, safety and direction a mother should give to her son. The narrative is interposed with references to this safe-haven, this idealised place or person, which Futh is seeking throughout his life. He becomes a semi-functional being, a man who is deeply socially awkward, incompetent and perhaps even slightly impotent. This longing hangs over his life and prevents him from, essentially, enjoying anything and deriving any sense of success of personal achievement.
“And Futh, looking at the lighthouse, wondered how this could happen--how there could be this constant warning of danger, the taking of all these precautions, and yet still there was all this wreckage.”
I think this book is an extremely effective exploration into one man’s mind. If anything, Alison Moore shows how early childhood experiences shape a man and linger on for the rest of his life unless he actively attempts to break the cycle. And the ending she leaves us with is utterly open to interpretation, the story echoed on long after I finished reading it. I recommend it highly.
It’s also about futility and the fruitless nature of such longing. Instead of living in the now and making the most of what we do have the human mind always seeks such impossibilities. This creates a stream of consciousness like feel to some parts of the book. Futh may pick up an item or smell a certain smell and he is drawn back in time, ultimately, relaying his memories and demonstrating how they constantly reassert themselves in his present state. He is unable to move on and escape from the past so he can get on with his life. He has gone on holiday to get over his break-up with his wife, but instead spends the entire trip reminiscing about times gone by.
Moore chronicles the life of this sad character, a man rejected by his farther and abandoned by his mother who still seeks some sense of parental love long into his forties. He never got over these early problems in his developmental stages; thus, they are carried through to adulthood. At times it felt like Moore based her character, and his psychological issues, on the Freudian stages of psychosexual development. Futh has developed a strong sense of oedipal complex; he looks for his mother in other women, and especially his wife. She reminds him of his early memories, and he is drawn to the scent that activates his memories. It’s why she became frustrated with him, which isn’t overly surprising.
In his pocket Futh carries the lighthouse, a miniature perfume bottle holder that is his last physical link to his mother. He rubs it in his pocket when he gets nervous. He carries it around with him everywhere and seeks comfort in the caressing of it. It embodies her, a sense of warmth, safety and direction a mother should give to her son. The narrative is interposed with references to this safe-haven, this idealised place or person, which Futh is seeking throughout his life. He becomes a semi-functional being, a man who is deeply socially awkward, incompetent and perhaps even slightly impotent. This longing hangs over his life and prevents him from, essentially, enjoying anything and deriving any sense of success of personal achievement.
“And Futh, looking at the lighthouse, wondered how this could happen--how there could be this constant warning of danger, the taking of all these precautions, and yet still there was all this wreckage.”
I think this book is an extremely effective exploration into one man’s mind. If anything, Alison Moore shows how early childhood experiences shape a man and linger on for the rest of his life unless he actively attempts to break the cycle. And the ending she leaves us with is utterly open to interpretation, the story echoed on long after I finished reading it. I recommend it highly.
October 4, 2012
The Lighthouse is one of those novels which grows on you as you read it and you only realise how good a novel it is a little after you have finished it.
It is written from the point of view of 2 characters. Both have boring, mundane lives. The man,Futh,is someone to whom things happen. He is not a person who could ever be described as proactive. The woman, Ester,is a sad and disappointed person with an inappropriate libido. Futh and Ester virtually never meet or speak to one another but the whole story is about how they are connected.
The plot itself, about a man's one week walking holiday in Germany, is fairly irrelevant. This novel is all about backstory which is fed to the reader drip by drip until, eventually, one realises what has happened and what, indeed, must happen (though the ending is ambiguous).
Throughout this novel about memory the senses dominate. Smell is perhaps the most frequently used but taste and touch are both important too.The writing transports you to a gentle yet cruel world in which very ordinary people live from day to day.
It is written from the point of view of 2 characters. Both have boring, mundane lives. The man,Futh,is someone to whom things happen. He is not a person who could ever be described as proactive. The woman, Ester,is a sad and disappointed person with an inappropriate libido. Futh and Ester virtually never meet or speak to one another but the whole story is about how they are connected.
The plot itself, about a man's one week walking holiday in Germany, is fairly irrelevant. This novel is all about backstory which is fed to the reader drip by drip until, eventually, one realises what has happened and what, indeed, must happen (though the ending is ambiguous).
Throughout this novel about memory the senses dominate. Smell is perhaps the most frequently used but taste and touch are both important too.The writing transports you to a gentle yet cruel world in which very ordinary people live from day to day.
February 5, 2013
Some books are a rich substantial meal. This one hardly qualifies as a snack. To push the analogy a bit further: a bowl of clear soup that smells unusual and turns up something disconcerting and unidentifiable. Transparent, but still off-putting.
Surely no-one in their right mind would stay at a hotel called Hellhaus. I mean, hell house. Bit Stephen King isn't it? And then this guy on a walking holiday and so you call him Futh, which sounds a lot like foot. Hopeless and helpless, he is. In his mid-forties, and you wonder how he even got this far: still wants his mummy, doesn't even know enough to put the sun cream on before you get the burn, or to break new walking boots in gently rather than doing a five hour hike on the first day. I'm not even sure how he manages to survive the week as he's thin before he starts and doesn't appear to be capable of locating food. Search and starve.
Anyway, as he's getting lost (how did we guess that would happen?) he remembers stuff, which is quite interesting, and macabre, and depressing and a little repetitive at times. At the same time he is circling round, inexorably moving towards hell house.
Now this all sounds a bit narky doesn't it? But I liked it. I didn't like any of the characters in it, but I still liked the book. I'd have liked it an awful lot more if it hadn't been sold to me as a novel, which it patently isn't. As a short story it would have been great.
Surely no-one in their right mind would stay at a hotel called Hellhaus. I mean, hell house. Bit Stephen King isn't it? And then this guy on a walking holiday and so you call him Futh, which sounds a lot like foot. Hopeless and helpless, he is. In his mid-forties, and you wonder how he even got this far: still wants his mummy, doesn't even know enough to put the sun cream on before you get the burn, or to break new walking boots in gently rather than doing a five hour hike on the first day. I'm not even sure how he manages to survive the week as he's thin before he starts and doesn't appear to be capable of locating food. Search and starve.
Anyway, as he's getting lost (how did we guess that would happen?) he remembers stuff, which is quite interesting, and macabre, and depressing and a little repetitive at times. At the same time he is circling round, inexorably moving towards hell house.
Now this all sounds a bit narky doesn't it? But I liked it. I didn't like any of the characters in it, but I still liked the book. I'd have liked it an awful lot more if it hadn't been sold to me as a novel, which it patently isn't. As a short story it would have been great.
August 15, 2012
The twin central narratives of Alison Moore's Booker Prize nominated novel "The Lighthouse" take place over a week, following Futh and Ester, whose stories cross, diverge and finally converge. Futh is always referred to without title, and we never learn his forename. He is eminently forgettable: after a week Ester "cannot picture him at all" and the other stranger Futh meets at the start of the book, Carl, after a week "finds that he cannot really visualise him" or remember his name. I myself have in the previous sentence twice mistyped his name Fruth.
The novel is steeped in memorial processes and is in a sense about memory, about failing to come to terms with experience, failing to close the loop. Much of the book finds us peering back into the past; lives are reconstructed from memory, past stories weave through the present. The central symbols of the novel recur: the lighthouse, smoke, the scents of violets and camphor.
In this book, smell is (you’ll forgive the pun) essential; late on Fruth smells camphor at a critical moment and the experience is "like being wrenched soul first through time" - the familiar physicality of the Proustian memoire involontaire, at once real and diffuse. Perfume is a presence and an absence at the same time; it can not be seen but is apprehended, and its presence allows us to experience the trace of an absence; it is in effect the presence of absence. This is why it is so resonant in this poetical and elegaic novel; Ester smells her estranged husband beside her in the bed, and strengthens it with camphor; elsewhere, camphor is an essence of Futh’s mother:
"..the dark interior of her wardrobe, the smell of leather and secret cigratte smoke and camphor from the mothballs she used in the summer, is what he would have liked to bottle and label ‘Essence of Mother’, but instead he has violets and oranges."
In this one passage we also find the trace of forbidden cigarette smoke; as a child Futh gets caught with a cigarette he didn’t even smoke, with the smell held in evidence against him. Three of the characters smoke furtively (Futh’s mother, Ester, and Futh’s estranged wife Angela) - so smoke, itself a liminal substance, attaches to them as an incarnation of the past in the present. The smoke of Angela reminds Futh of his mother, and he speculates that to Angela the smoke reminds her of her previous lover.
Another scent, violets, is also contained within another symbol, the Lighthouse. There are three lighthouses, and two of them are perfume bottles. There is Futh’s silver lighthouse whose vial of violets has been broken and lost; and Ester’s smaller cheaper wooden lighthouse whose vial is intact. The lighthouse’s purpose is therefore for containing scent, but one of them does not contain scent, and if scent is itself an absence, then the absence of a vial of scent from its container then makes for a double absence.
Another symbol - oranges - is less fathomable; twinned with violets in the perfume, another of Futh’s associations of his mother, and without Ester’s knowing this, it is nonetheless very pointed that Ester is eating an orange at the moment at which she is most truculent to the stranger Futh, who is a guest at her hotel.
For a week Futh stays each day in a different hotel, on a walking tour between them through Germany, returning to Ester’s husband’s hotel, the Hellhaus - which means (of course) ‘Light House’ auf Deutsch but has other obvious resonances in English, which are not inappropriate: the hotel is dysfunctional. Ester sleeps with the guests in other guest’s rooms, under the eye of her frustratedly jealous husband, who had originally married her to get an obscure revenge on his estranged brother whom he “never really liked”. She has a collection of venus flytraps she feeds with dead flies, which occasionally themselves die. Male and female emotional dysfunction are discreetly catalogued.
The central symbol of the lighthouse is looked at through different prisms. It is the aforementioned perfume container, and it is also a real lighthouse, from the past; which Futh’s father holds forth on in a detailed factual and banal way; to him it is technology, but to Futh it is a symbol. It has become conflated in his imagination with loss, and so it is ironic that his father would have a quite different apprehension.
Another scent, coffee, we find experienced by Futh twice in a few pages; the first time it is noted that the coffee beans have clearly lost their aroma in processing and had it put back artificially (another compound absence! (and another pun, sorry)) and with his next cup, what is Futh reminded of but his mother! There is nothing in the present that is not tainted with the past.
Traces betraying absence; this novel is a tissue of recollections, in the air, evanescent, but if it has a central point to make, it might ultimately be that there is a reality, a consequence, to the ephemeral or barely tangible; memories cling to us like perfume or cigarette smoke, and they make us act and do things we will nostalgize or regret; and, as we find as a reader accelerating through the final pages toward a very real climacteric, these symbols can suddenly find themselves attaining a physical and life-changing import and consequence. But will we be able to move past them into the future?
The novel is steeped in memorial processes and is in a sense about memory, about failing to come to terms with experience, failing to close the loop. Much of the book finds us peering back into the past; lives are reconstructed from memory, past stories weave through the present. The central symbols of the novel recur: the lighthouse, smoke, the scents of violets and camphor.
In this book, smell is (you’ll forgive the pun) essential; late on Fruth smells camphor at a critical moment and the experience is "like being wrenched soul first through time" - the familiar physicality of the Proustian memoire involontaire, at once real and diffuse. Perfume is a presence and an absence at the same time; it can not be seen but is apprehended, and its presence allows us to experience the trace of an absence; it is in effect the presence of absence. This is why it is so resonant in this poetical and elegaic novel; Ester smells her estranged husband beside her in the bed, and strengthens it with camphor; elsewhere, camphor is an essence of Futh’s mother:
"..the dark interior of her wardrobe, the smell of leather and secret cigratte smoke and camphor from the mothballs she used in the summer, is what he would have liked to bottle and label ‘Essence of Mother’, but instead he has violets and oranges."
In this one passage we also find the trace of forbidden cigarette smoke; as a child Futh gets caught with a cigarette he didn’t even smoke, with the smell held in evidence against him. Three of the characters smoke furtively (Futh’s mother, Ester, and Futh’s estranged wife Angela) - so smoke, itself a liminal substance, attaches to them as an incarnation of the past in the present. The smoke of Angela reminds Futh of his mother, and he speculates that to Angela the smoke reminds her of her previous lover.
Another scent, violets, is also contained within another symbol, the Lighthouse. There are three lighthouses, and two of them are perfume bottles. There is Futh’s silver lighthouse whose vial of violets has been broken and lost; and Ester’s smaller cheaper wooden lighthouse whose vial is intact. The lighthouse’s purpose is therefore for containing scent, but one of them does not contain scent, and if scent is itself an absence, then the absence of a vial of scent from its container then makes for a double absence.
Another symbol - oranges - is less fathomable; twinned with violets in the perfume, another of Futh’s associations of his mother, and without Ester’s knowing this, it is nonetheless very pointed that Ester is eating an orange at the moment at which she is most truculent to the stranger Futh, who is a guest at her hotel.
For a week Futh stays each day in a different hotel, on a walking tour between them through Germany, returning to Ester’s husband’s hotel, the Hellhaus - which means (of course) ‘Light House’ auf Deutsch but has other obvious resonances in English, which are not inappropriate: the hotel is dysfunctional. Ester sleeps with the guests in other guest’s rooms, under the eye of her frustratedly jealous husband, who had originally married her to get an obscure revenge on his estranged brother whom he “never really liked”. She has a collection of venus flytraps she feeds with dead flies, which occasionally themselves die. Male and female emotional dysfunction are discreetly catalogued.
The central symbol of the lighthouse is looked at through different prisms. It is the aforementioned perfume container, and it is also a real lighthouse, from the past; which Futh’s father holds forth on in a detailed factual and banal way; to him it is technology, but to Futh it is a symbol. It has become conflated in his imagination with loss, and so it is ironic that his father would have a quite different apprehension.
Another scent, coffee, we find experienced by Futh twice in a few pages; the first time it is noted that the coffee beans have clearly lost their aroma in processing and had it put back artificially (another compound absence! (and another pun, sorry)) and with his next cup, what is Futh reminded of but his mother! There is nothing in the present that is not tainted with the past.
Traces betraying absence; this novel is a tissue of recollections, in the air, evanescent, but if it has a central point to make, it might ultimately be that there is a reality, a consequence, to the ephemeral or barely tangible; memories cling to us like perfume or cigarette smoke, and they make us act and do things we will nostalgize or regret; and, as we find as a reader accelerating through the final pages toward a very real climacteric, these symbols can suddenly find themselves attaining a physical and life-changing import and consequence. But will we be able to move past them into the future?
October 19, 2012
I'm not sure what the opposite of "sublime" literature is called, but the British own it. Ever since reading the novels of Barbara Pym in the late 70s, I've marveled at this national genre of misery — drab constricted lives of careful economies and invincible repression. Sad food seems to be the abiding metaphor. In Pym I recall characters fixing small meals out of "tins." Early in Alison Moore's crafted short novel we find the hapless Futh being served a meal by the equally wretched Ester.
Ester goes to the kitchen to fetch the plate of cold cuts which was prepared for him at lunchtime and has been kept under clingfilm in the fridge since then.... She puts the plate of cold meats down on the bedside table and peels off the cling film. It looks a little dry, but that is his own fault.
In fact the Kafkaesque impossibility of The Unfortunate Futh getting a square meal is one of the novel's more comic leitmotifs. He is the very icon of abject desolation, sun-burned, hobbled, starving; his hair is thin and his crotch is stained by drips from a beef and onion pasty. He is deserted first by his mother, then by his wife (who keeps telling him "I am not your mother"). His idea of a pet is a terrarium of stick insects. (He loses them too.) His opposite image is Ester, betraying and beaten in return by her camphor-scented husband. She feeds flies to carnivorous plants and hoards perfume bottles and romance novels. No one in this novel is happy — ever.
Naturally this is exactly the kind of book that gets shortlisted for the Man Booker. I won't deny that I relished its understated agonies. Moore knows how to weave a pattern, even if its echoes and assonances are a bit pronounced. Everyone gets what's coming. One of its peripheral characters asks "Do you ever get a bad feeling about something?" In The Lighthouse there isn't any other kind.
Ester goes to the kitchen to fetch the plate of cold cuts which was prepared for him at lunchtime and has been kept under clingfilm in the fridge since then.... She puts the plate of cold meats down on the bedside table and peels off the cling film. It looks a little dry, but that is his own fault.
In fact the Kafkaesque impossibility of The Unfortunate Futh getting a square meal is one of the novel's more comic leitmotifs. He is the very icon of abject desolation, sun-burned, hobbled, starving; his hair is thin and his crotch is stained by drips from a beef and onion pasty. He is deserted first by his mother, then by his wife (who keeps telling him "I am not your mother"). His idea of a pet is a terrarium of stick insects. (He loses them too.) His opposite image is Ester, betraying and beaten in return by her camphor-scented husband. She feeds flies to carnivorous plants and hoards perfume bottles and romance novels. No one in this novel is happy — ever.
Naturally this is exactly the kind of book that gets shortlisted for the Man Booker. I won't deny that I relished its understated agonies. Moore knows how to weave a pattern, even if its echoes and assonances are a bit pronounced. Everyone gets what's coming. One of its peripheral characters asks "Do you ever get a bad feeling about something?" In The Lighthouse there isn't any other kind.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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September 28, 2017This is not a novel. It is a joke. I don't feel though that the long shaggy build up equals the punch line or vice versa.
My heart, an unreasonable organ, abandoning its regular duties, tells me that the author has the qualities of a short story writer. Here though they are stretched out and the details felt superfluous at times. Did I care, did I know -became do I know, do I care? Nor does it really feel like a novella.
The second chapter had the title "Breasts" and I brightened up in anticipation of that topic, the author however did not give me quite the satisfaction I sought, there is among her characters a longing for the maternal breast evinced in furtive smokers and an obsession with failed and failing relationships, here the milk of human kindness runs sour. Indeed the titular lighthouse is less a phallic symbol, it is more that it illuminates the way back to mothers, both the absent mothers of the two main narrative characters, who are led back to their mothers by scent memories, and the ur-mother who had first owned the perfume bottle in an ornamental silvery lighthouse. One of the main characters is linked by her breast to the mother of the other, one has a port-wine stain that vanishes into her bikini top, the other a tattooed flower above her left breast .
I was perhaps particularly disappointed because early on I thought that the main character had not been chucked out by his wife but he'd probably killed her with that damned silvery lighthouse he carried about with him but that he refused to remember his own action like in that episode of "The Gentle Touch"with the bathroom scales which the author had almost certainly seen since back then when we were growing up as there were only three TV channels then, but I was wrong.
It is a very constructed story with contrasting and repeated elements, both mildly sexually predatory women have a Venus fly trap on the window, love doesn't just sting but kills, indirectly. The mother and the wife are both Angelas and both fly away. Oranges are gifted. Scents have a power and call back to a time of youth before sorrow, but it is all so much artificial bovine manure. Violence as a proxy for love. There's even a little bonfire of the vanities, the main characters inability to maintain a car echoes an inability to sustain a marriage. Infertile marriages. The very title suggests that if you get To The Lighthouse that you may not like it there. That echo, what's the time Mrs Wolf? Dinnertime! led me irreverently to wonder what her novel might have been like if written by a man , but enough of such fripperies, despite warnings repeatedly repeated slightly repetitively that Lighthouses are not sufficient to save the unwary from crashing onto rocks. There are only the wrong lessons to be learnt from the teacher-father. Mothers are tantalising yet absent, adult sexuality is exploitative and unsatisfying. One character is called Esther - wasn't there an Esther in the Bible who used her status as a sex-slave to save a bunch of people - ha, not in this book. I like allusion and playfulness, in moderation, here as a reader I felt just jerked around, and I say I had considerably more amusement writing this review than reading the book which given it's slightness is a bit over stuffed with symbols, allusions and correspondences between characters which are never directly expressed or known within the text, being reserved by the author for the reader.
My heart, an unreasonable organ, abandoning its regular duties, tells me that the author has the qualities of a short story writer. Here though they are stretched out and the details felt superfluous at times. Did I care, did I know -became do I know, do I care? Nor does it really feel like a novella.
The second chapter had the title "Breasts" and I brightened up in anticipation of that topic, the author however did not give me quite the satisfaction I sought, there is among her characters a longing for the maternal breast evinced in furtive smokers and an obsession with failed and failing relationships, here the milk of human kindness runs sour. Indeed the titular lighthouse is less a phallic symbol, it is more that it illuminates the way back to mothers, both the absent mothers of the two main narrative characters, who are led back to their mothers by scent memories, and the ur-mother who had first owned the perfume bottle in an ornamental silvery lighthouse. One of the main characters is linked by her breast to the mother of the other, one has a port-wine stain that vanishes into her bikini top, the other a tattooed flower above her left breast .
I was perhaps particularly disappointed because early on I thought that the main character had not been chucked out by his wife but he'd probably killed her with that damned silvery lighthouse he carried about with him but that he refused to remember his own action like in that episode of "The Gentle Touch"with the bathroom scales which the author had almost certainly seen since back then when we were growing up as there were only three TV channels then, but I was wrong.
It is a very constructed story with contrasting and repeated elements, both mildly sexually predatory women have a Venus fly trap on the window, love doesn't just sting but kills, indirectly. The mother and the wife are both Angelas and both fly away. Oranges are gifted. Scents have a power and call back to a time of youth before sorrow, but it is all so much artificial bovine manure. Violence as a proxy for love. There's even a little bonfire of the vanities, the main characters inability to maintain a car echoes an inability to sustain a marriage. Infertile marriages. The very title suggests that if you get To The Lighthouse that you may not like it there. That echo, what's the time Mrs Wolf? Dinnertime! led me irreverently to wonder what her novel might have been like if written by a man , but enough of such fripperies, despite warnings repeatedly repeated slightly repetitively that Lighthouses are not sufficient to save the unwary from crashing onto rocks. There are only the wrong lessons to be learnt from the teacher-father. Mothers are tantalising yet absent, adult sexuality is exploitative and unsatisfying. One character is called Esther - wasn't there an Esther in the Bible who used her status as a sex-slave to save a bunch of people - ha, not in this book. I like allusion and playfulness, in moderation, here as a reader I felt just jerked around, and I say I had considerably more amusement writing this review than reading the book which given it's slightness is a bit over stuffed with symbols, allusions and correspondences between characters which are never directly expressed or known within the text, being reserved by the author for the reader.
July 5, 2017
در دوران کودکیاش همیشه برای فرار کردن خیال پردازی میکرد. تصور میکرد روزی نام و ظاهرش را تغییر دهد و فرار کند طوری که هیچکس او را نشناسد. البته هنوز هم به فرار فکر میکرد و حتی میتوانست به هر جا که میخواهد فرار کند و زندگی جدیدی را آغاز نماید. میتوانست در آلمان بماند یا به نیویورک برود. میتوانست به خانه نرود و آنجلا و پدرش و گلوریا نگران این باشند که چه بلایی سرش آمده است. فکر کرد اولین کسی که متوجه غیبت او میشود چه کسی خواهد بود.
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November 6, 2012
I was so looking forward to this. So disappointed.
Is there a genre for books where nothing happens and you just don't care about any of the characters? What is it called? If I knew, I could make sure to avoid books like this in future because they are an utter waste of my time to read.
I'd really like to know what a writer's motivation is to write something like this. Moore seems to take no pleasure in words, nor her characters, nor in plot. This results in an overwhelming sense of detachment, which the reader cannot climb over or through, and which can only leave you feeling depressed. Really it just raises questions for me about the nature of writing, the nature of reading and what it's all about. I'm convinced there should be something in this writing-reading experience about connecting: connecting with a character, connecting with words, or connecting with the writer. I don't mind being challenged or having to work for this connection. But I feel disrespected when the writer has no regard for this connection at all, because it follows that the writer has no respect for their reader(s).
I wanted to think about Futh, and his 'nothing' name. A name that sounds like a short exhalation, or a fart. All I can say is that Moore marks him out as being useless, nothing of import, doomed from the start with that moniker. Perhaps I wanted to be proved wrong. I dared to hope for him. But I was embarrassed to have wasted that hope. How could a man named Futh come to anything good in life?
Is there a genre for books where nothing happens and you just don't care about any of the characters? What is it called? If I knew, I could make sure to avoid books like this in future because they are an utter waste of my time to read.
I'd really like to know what a writer's motivation is to write something like this. Moore seems to take no pleasure in words, nor her characters, nor in plot. This results in an overwhelming sense of detachment, which the reader cannot climb over or through, and which can only leave you feeling depressed. Really it just raises questions for me about the nature of writing, the nature of reading and what it's all about. I'm convinced there should be something in this writing-reading experience about connecting: connecting with a character, connecting with words, or connecting with the writer. I don't mind being challenged or having to work for this connection. But I feel disrespected when the writer has no regard for this connection at all, because it follows that the writer has no respect for their reader(s).
I wanted to think about Futh, and his 'nothing' name. A name that sounds like a short exhalation, or a fart. All I can say is that Moore marks him out as being useless, nothing of import, doomed from the start with that moniker. Perhaps I wanted to be proved wrong. I dared to hope for him. But I was embarrassed to have wasted that hope. How could a man named Futh come to anything good in life?
December 16, 2022
I initially had a few qualms about this book, as it is somewhat slow in playing its hand on what it is really about, or where it's going - although I was never NOT invested in the story or characters. But by the unexpected, albeit somewhat inevitable ending, one realizes how firmly in control the author has been all along. Much like protagonist Futh, who is on a walking holiday in Germany, with really no set plans or agenda, it somewhat meanders and gets lost along the way - often you realize that suddenly you are in a memory, or somewhere else you weren't quite sure about. Even the title is a bit misleading, as though there is indeed a lighthouse figuring in Futh's childhood excursions, it in actuality refers to a trinket (well, two by the end) in the shape of a lighthouse that houses a vial of perfume.
I've rarely read anything that has such a strong emphasis on the olfactory sense - in fact, most of the chapters are entitled after smells that figure within them: Violets, Oranges, Camphor. Beef and Onions, Perfume, Stewed Apples, Disinfectant, Cigarette Smoke, etc. The tense atmosphere invoked is Hitchcockian - as is that violent, though a bit inconclusive, ending.
On the basis of this, I look forward to reading the rest of Moore's oeuvre - especially since she only has a handful of other titles.
I've rarely read anything that has such a strong emphasis on the olfactory sense - in fact, most of the chapters are entitled after smells that figure within them: Violets, Oranges, Camphor. Beef and Onions, Perfume, Stewed Apples, Disinfectant, Cigarette Smoke, etc. The tense atmosphere invoked is Hitchcockian - as is that violent, though a bit inconclusive, ending.
On the basis of this, I look forward to reading the rest of Moore's oeuvre - especially since she only has a handful of other titles.
August 19, 2014
This is one of the most carefully constructed novels I have read in a while. The author spent a lot of time planning this book with pre-chosen symbolism. The major theme in this book is scent... in fact, the main character is a chemist who works in synthetic smell/scratch and sniff technology. The smells are interwoven in the book and link all of the characters intricately and if you follow the weave of the scents you see the greater fabric of the story. I think this technique is what impressed me the most. By the end all of the characters were represented by scents... cigarette smoke, violet, oranges, sun creams, camphor...
There are also a lot of visual symbol: moths, venus fly traps, the lighthouse. The human theme, I think, was revenge as it was what drove the actions of all the characters who had an impact. She must have had quite the outline prior to starting this book. It had to be diagrammed and meticulously plotted; there is no organic free form writing to this story.
The main character's name: completely odd yet forgettable... genius choice.
Aside from the careful planning, the simple prose and the devastating story line made for an incredible read. I recommend this book highly. I couldn't stop thinking about it for a long while after I finished it.
There are also a lot of visual symbol: moths, venus fly traps, the lighthouse. The human theme, I think, was revenge as it was what drove the actions of all the characters who had an impact. She must have had quite the outline prior to starting this book. It had to be diagrammed and meticulously plotted; there is no organic free form writing to this story.
The main character's name: completely odd yet forgettable... genius choice.
Aside from the careful planning, the simple prose and the devastating story line made for an incredible read. I recommend this book highly. I couldn't stop thinking about it for a long while after I finished it.
March 17, 2018
کتاب درمورد زندگی مردیه که در دوران کودکی، مادرش اون و پدرش رو ترک میکنه و سال ها بعد مرد با زنی ازدواج میکنه که احساس میکنه شبیه به مادرشه و انتظار داره همسرش جای خالی مادرش رو واسش پر کنه.. مردی که ناتوان از برقراری ارتباطه و توسط ادم های مختلف پس زده میشه و همسرش هم اونو ترک میکنه.
شیوه ی روایت کتاب واقعا زیبا و جذابه. زمان و مکان روایت به طور مداوم جا به جا میشه و گذشته و آینده بطور هنرمندانه ای در هم آمیخته میشن.. از لحاظ روانشناختی هم کاملا قابل تامله.. ولی بنظرم خط داستانی کتاب پیچیدگی های لازم رو نداشت و میتونست روند خیلی جذاب تری داشته باشه..
در کل اگه بخوام خیلی کوتاه تعریفش کنم باید بگم روایت زندگی ادم های تنها..
شیوه ی روایت کتاب واقعا زیبا و جذابه. زمان و مکان روایت به طور مداوم جا به جا میشه و گذشته و آینده بطور هنرمندانه ای در هم آمیخته میشن.. از لحاظ روانشناختی هم کاملا قابل تامله.. ولی بنظرم خط داستانی کتاب پیچیدگی های لازم رو نداشت و میتونست روند خیلی جذاب تری داشته باشه..
در کل اگه بخوام خیلی کوتاه تعریفش کنم باید بگم روایت زندگی ادم های تنها..
October 5, 2012
Another one from the 2012 Booker shortlist....
The Lighthouse is a brief novel, following two characters that interact only at the beginning and end. Both live lonely, isolated, unhappy lives; both seem powerless to change anything.
I did enjoy how the book was written. It felt like at least four simultaneous stories were being told - Futh in present day, where he and his wife have separated and he is doing a walking loop in Germany; Futh as a child right as his mother has left; Futh as a young adult, newly married; Ester in the present day, helping her husband Bernard run an inn. Despite everything going on, it was never confusing, and the characters themselves seemed to be reliving the memories during the story, and this was very effective. In some ways this is a book of memory and how bad decisions impact the future, sometimes not even your own bad decisions.
Sigh... poor Futh:
"He could not stop thinking about all the ways in which he had annoyed his wife during their marriage."
There isn't much more I can say without giving away most of the plot. It could have seemed imitative but the characters were written very realistically, albeit hopelessly. I'd consider this a very strong first novel, but I wouldn't expect it to win the Booker (however I'm usually wrong). I'm teetering between three and four stars here, and I think this is worth the read - it only took me an evening to read.
The Lighthouse is a brief novel, following two characters that interact only at the beginning and end. Both live lonely, isolated, unhappy lives; both seem powerless to change anything.
I did enjoy how the book was written. It felt like at least four simultaneous stories were being told - Futh in present day, where he and his wife have separated and he is doing a walking loop in Germany; Futh as a child right as his mother has left; Futh as a young adult, newly married; Ester in the present day, helping her husband Bernard run an inn. Despite everything going on, it was never confusing, and the characters themselves seemed to be reliving the memories during the story, and this was very effective. In some ways this is a book of memory and how bad decisions impact the future, sometimes not even your own bad decisions.
Sigh... poor Futh:
"He could not stop thinking about all the ways in which he had annoyed his wife during their marriage."
There isn't much more I can say without giving away most of the plot. It could have seemed imitative but the characters were written very realistically, albeit hopelessly. I'd consider this a very strong first novel, but I wouldn't expect it to win the Booker (however I'm usually wrong). I'm teetering between three and four stars here, and I think this is worth the read - it only took me an evening to read.
June 23, 2013
I reached for a random book on Friday ... as we were leaving the house .... I had expected a book to arrive that day but it did not ... and so I reached up to my 'to be read' book shelf and grabbed a book I bought in London in November. A book I had intended to read for a while but did not know just when. Turns out it was now.
We drove 2,5 hours into the deep woods. The deep Woods of Norway. To a cabin we refer to as Elsewhere.
Where we coccoon. We eat, play, laugh, and mostly we turn pages. In hammocks, in chairs, on blankets and in bed. We reset here in the woods.
This time we only had from Friday until early Sunday but still it was lovely.
And what made it such an amazing time for me this time was that "random" book I grabbed. Wow. So beautiful. Not one line wasted. Not one empty word. All of it just beautifully perfect. I read every word slowly and felt it all. I lived it.
As I closed this book I thought to myself "This is your best read of the summer. It is your first and yet nothing will beat this experience. This is one of those books that you will forever remember which chair you sat in when you read it. Now which book do you knock off your top 5 so that this can claim it's rightful place?"
We drove 2,5 hours into the deep woods. The deep Woods of Norway. To a cabin we refer to as Elsewhere.
Where we coccoon. We eat, play, laugh, and mostly we turn pages. In hammocks, in chairs, on blankets and in bed. We reset here in the woods.
This time we only had from Friday until early Sunday but still it was lovely.
And what made it such an amazing time for me this time was that "random" book I grabbed. Wow. So beautiful. Not one line wasted. Not one empty word. All of it just beautifully perfect. I read every word slowly and felt it all. I lived it.
As I closed this book I thought to myself "This is your best read of the summer. It is your first and yet nothing will beat this experience. This is one of those books that you will forever remember which chair you sat in when you read it. Now which book do you knock off your top 5 so that this can claim it's rightful place?"
December 3, 2012
Horrid, horrid, horrid. I could not stand this. I gave it 62 pages, which is more than generous for a book I'm hating as much as I hated this one. It's a puzzlement to me how this got longlisted for the Booker prize. Some people's tastes are unfathomable.
July 21, 2018
Βαθμολογία: 7/10
Η σχετικά μέτρια βαθμολογία του σε Amazon και Goodreads με είχε αποτρέψει να το αγοράσω τότε που κυκλοφόρησε στα ελληνικά από τις εκδόσεις Ίκαρος (Οκτώβριος του 2013), αλλά τελικά το βιβλίο το αγόρασα αρκετά χρόνια μετά, τον Μάρτιο που μας πέρασε, με γερή έκπτωση. Λοιπόν, τώρα που το διάβασα, μπορώ να κατανοήσω σε μεγάλο βαθμό τις αντιφατικές κριτικές και τα ανάμικτα συναισθήματα που υπάρχουν για το βιβλίο. Από τη μια μου φάνηκε αρκετά καλογραμμένο, ευκολοδιάβαστο και ατμοσφαιρικό, με λίγες... ασαφείς νότες μυστηρίου και με την αίσθηση ότι κάτι επικίνδυνο μπορεί να εμφανιστεί στην πορεία, από την άλλη όμως δεν μπορώ να πω ότι ένιωσα κάτι το ιδιαίτερο για τους χαρακτήρες, που μου φάνηκαν ολίγον τι μίζεροι και σπαστικοί (πάντως τους δούλεψε αρκετά καλά η συγγραφέας), ενώ ουσιαστικά στην όλη πλοκή λίγα πράγματα συμβαίνουν, με μεγάλο μέρος της να αποτελείται από αναδρομές στο παρελθόν των δυο βασικών χαρακτήρων. Όσον αφορά το τέλος, δεν είναι τόσο ασαφές όσο φαίνεται, αλλά μου φάνηκε κάπως απότομο και λιγάκι άνισο. Είναι ένα βιβλίο χαμηλών τόνων που μιλάει για τη θλίψη, την εγκατάλειψη και την ανθρώπινη μοναξιά, έχει κάποια πράγματα να πει και πιθανότατα δεν είναι χάσιμο χρόνου η ανάγνωσή του, όμως κάτι του λείπει για να κάνει τη διαφορά. Κανονικά θα του έβαζα τριάμισι αστεράκια, αλλά μιας και δεν υπάρχει αυτή η δυνατότητα, θα του βάλω τρία.
Η σχετικά μέτρια βαθμολογία του σε Amazon και Goodreads με είχε αποτρέψει να το αγοράσω τότε που κυκλοφόρησε στα ελληνικά από τις εκδόσεις Ίκαρος (Οκτώβριος του 2013), αλλά τελικά το βιβλίο το αγόρασα αρκετά χρόνια μετά, τον Μάρτιο που μας πέρασε, με γερή έκπτωση. Λοιπόν, τώρα που το διάβασα, μπορώ να κατανοήσω σε μεγάλο βαθμό τις αντιφατικές κριτικές και τα ανάμικτα συναισθήματα που υπάρχουν για το βιβλίο. Από τη μια μου φάνηκε αρκετά καλογραμμένο, ευκολοδιάβαστο και ατμοσφαιρικό, με λίγες... ασαφείς νότες μυστηρίου και με την αίσθηση ότι κάτι επικίνδυνο μπορεί να εμφανιστεί στην πορεία, από την άλλη όμως δεν μπορώ να πω ότι ένιωσα κάτι το ιδιαίτερο για τους χαρακτήρες, που μου φάνηκαν ολίγον τι μίζεροι και σπαστικοί (πάντως τους δούλεψε αρκετά καλά η συγγραφέας), ενώ ουσιαστικά στην όλη πλοκή λίγα πράγματα συμβαίνουν, με μεγάλο μέρος της να αποτελείται από αναδρομές στο παρελθόν των δυο βασικών χαρακτήρων. Όσον αφορά το τέλος, δεν είναι τόσο ασαφές όσο φαίνεται, αλλά μου φάνηκε κάπως απότομο και λιγάκι άνισο. Είναι ένα βιβλίο χαμηλών τόνων που μιλάει για τη θλίψη, την εγκατάλειψη και την ανθρώπινη μοναξιά, έχει κάποια πράγματα να πει και πιθανότατα δεν είναι χάσιμο χρόνου η ανάγνωσή του, όμως κάτι του λείπει για να κάνει τη διαφορά. Κανονικά θα του έβαζα τριάμισι αστεράκια, αλλά μιας και δεν υπάρχει αυτή η δυνατότητα, θα του βάλω τρία.
August 5, 2018
I liked this quite a lot in the opening chapters. The foreboding atmosphere and oddball protagonist immediately drew me in. Somehow, I grew less impressed as the story progressed. I think I was expecting it to go somewhere more interesting than it did and maybe I was expecting more character development. Also, something about the author's writing style bothered me - especially all of the overt and repetitive symbolism. So many lighthouses! So many venus flytraps!
Not bad, especially for a first novel, but I'm surprised it was a Booker nominee.
Not bad, especially for a first novel, but I'm surprised it was a Booker nominee.
November 22, 2014
This is a strange little novel, and it gives rise to intriguingly polarized responses. I can see why, even though I liked it myself.
Certainly, there’s very little here for anyone looking for characters with whom they can identify, which accounts for some of the bad reviews this novel has received from readers. Neither of the main characters/ focalizers is appealing in the least, though I didn’t see that as a weakness in the novel. Futh is a hapless, emotionally constipated Englishman, recovering from a marriage breakup and some deeper-rooted ills; Esther a Hopperesque hotel-owner’s wife, nursing her mid-morning gin and mourning the loss of the brief flicker of sexual power that had buoyed her through her youth. Both are clichés, and surely meant to be perceived as such. Neither bears much resemblance to anyone I have ever encountered outside the pages of a novel. Both brandish their characterizing props as a medieval saint in an altarpiece might brandish his “attributes:” Futh has his stick-insects and his “Englishman-abroad” trio of shorts, sandals, and sunburn. Esther has her Venus flytraps and her Mills and Boon. Both are childless, as is fairly well underlined.
Anyway, all this is beside the point; this isn’t a novel that really responds to character-based analysis. There’s a poetic aspect to it, despite its absolute rejection of anything approaching stylistic “lyricism,” as it is usually understood (the style is notably—admirably—spare).
A very marked feature of the novel that assimilates it to poetry is its use of recurrent images or motifs, treated in a highly charged, symbolic manner. Aside from the eponymous lighthouse, which is ubiquitous, we have (in no particular order): the smell of violets; the smell of camphor; the smell of cigarette smoke disguised or mingled with other smells; the smell of disinfectant, also mingled; oranges; Venus fly-traps; moths; hand-wounds; the application of sun cream or other moisturizing creams. These take on an incantatory quality in the course of the novel, as they recur in ever-denser patterns. The rhythms reminded me distinctly of those of a sestina, with its recurring rhyme-words.
This may be professional deformation from my academic background, but I found myself wondering whether Moore was influenced more generally by medieval troubadour and stilnovo poetry, perhaps through the mediation of Ezra Pound. I can’t believe that it’s pure chance that three of the key women in the novel have such stilnovo names: Futh’s wife and mother are both named Angela, while the mother of his childhood frenemy, who looms quite large in the narrative, is called Gloria.
Whatever the merit of that particular thesis, there’s certainly a lot of “meta-” going on here. It’s hard to believe that the reference to Woolf in the title is fortuitous, or the large-scale channeling of Proust’s sensory-triggered memory theme. The novel is certainly very knowing, to the point almost of archness, yet it didn’t annoy me in the way books like that sometimes do. I admired the confidence and oddity of the book and its stylistic sure-footedness. This seemed an author who knows what she is about, even if her readers may be left a little in the dark.
Certainly, there’s very little here for anyone looking for characters with whom they can identify, which accounts for some of the bad reviews this novel has received from readers. Neither of the main characters/ focalizers is appealing in the least, though I didn’t see that as a weakness in the novel. Futh is a hapless, emotionally constipated Englishman, recovering from a marriage breakup and some deeper-rooted ills; Esther a Hopperesque hotel-owner’s wife, nursing her mid-morning gin and mourning the loss of the brief flicker of sexual power that had buoyed her through her youth. Both are clichés, and surely meant to be perceived as such. Neither bears much resemblance to anyone I have ever encountered outside the pages of a novel. Both brandish their characterizing props as a medieval saint in an altarpiece might brandish his “attributes:” Futh has his stick-insects and his “Englishman-abroad” trio of shorts, sandals, and sunburn. Esther has her Venus flytraps and her Mills and Boon. Both are childless, as is fairly well underlined.
Anyway, all this is beside the point; this isn’t a novel that really responds to character-based analysis. There’s a poetic aspect to it, despite its absolute rejection of anything approaching stylistic “lyricism,” as it is usually understood (the style is notably—admirably—spare).
A very marked feature of the novel that assimilates it to poetry is its use of recurrent images or motifs, treated in a highly charged, symbolic manner. Aside from the eponymous lighthouse, which is ubiquitous, we have (in no particular order): the smell of violets; the smell of camphor; the smell of cigarette smoke disguised or mingled with other smells; the smell of disinfectant, also mingled; oranges; Venus fly-traps; moths; hand-wounds; the application of sun cream or other moisturizing creams. These take on an incantatory quality in the course of the novel, as they recur in ever-denser patterns. The rhythms reminded me distinctly of those of a sestina, with its recurring rhyme-words.
This may be professional deformation from my academic background, but I found myself wondering whether Moore was influenced more generally by medieval troubadour and stilnovo poetry, perhaps through the mediation of Ezra Pound. I can’t believe that it’s pure chance that three of the key women in the novel have such stilnovo names: Futh’s wife and mother are both named Angela, while the mother of his childhood frenemy, who looms quite large in the narrative, is called Gloria.
Whatever the merit of that particular thesis, there’s certainly a lot of “meta-” going on here. It’s hard to believe that the reference to Woolf in the title is fortuitous, or the large-scale channeling of Proust’s sensory-triggered memory theme. The novel is certainly very knowing, to the point almost of archness, yet it didn’t annoy me in the way books like that sometimes do. I admired the confidence and oddity of the book and its stylistic sure-footedness. This seemed an author who knows what she is about, even if her readers may be left a little in the dark.
September 15, 2012
This is the other Booker-nominated book about a man who embarks on a trek, and ruminates about his life and his disappointments. The similarities with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry stop there though. Here, the story is about the lighthouse, and those it warns. Or beckons. The tale is prefaced with a quote from Muriel Spark's short story "The Curtain Blown by the Breeze': "she became a tall lighthouse sending out kindly beams which some took for welcome instead of warnings against the rocks". (I found a pdf of the short story at Waterstones http://www.waterstones.com/wat/images... ). This sets the tone for the rest of the book. There is a faint air of malevolence, of unease, that permeates the book. It is quiet but incessant. The story of Futh's week-long hike is told in fragments alternating with the stories of several people he encounters. We visit his memories on his journey, and also visit the backstories and memories of the other characters. The story builds inexorably, pulling together slowly and skillfully.
It continues to steep in my mind, and I like it more and more as I look back through the book and see how Moore constructed the story. It's a marvel how she managed to so tightly control the tone and atmosphere.
Recommended.
It continues to steep in my mind, and I like it more and more as I look back through the book and see how Moore constructed the story. It's a marvel how she managed to so tightly control the tone and atmosphere.
Recommended.
October 21, 2012
This book weaves a spell. I read it in one evening because I couldn't put it down. It follows a man named Futh, who is taking a trip to Germany, and a woman named Ester, who works at a hotel where Futh stays. Both Futh and Ester spend a lot of time thinking about the past, and the story crisscrosses between their memories and the present.
The writing is both evocative and sparse -- the scenes are chilling in their simplicity. It's the kind of ominous story that made me want to yell out, "Don't go there! Turn back!" But of course, the characters can't hear you. It reminded me of "The Driver's Seat" by Muriel Spark and "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan, both of which had similarly unsettling qualities.
I agree with another reviewer, Ali, who said that while this isn't the best novel she's read this year, it is one she won't soon forget.
Note: "The Lighthouse" was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2012 and is published by a small company in the U.K. Currently, the paperback is not widely available in the U.S. However, it is available on the Kindle and from iBooks.
The writing is both evocative and sparse -- the scenes are chilling in their simplicity. It's the kind of ominous story that made me want to yell out, "Don't go there! Turn back!" But of course, the characters can't hear you. It reminded me of "The Driver's Seat" by Muriel Spark and "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan, both of which had similarly unsettling qualities.
I agree with another reviewer, Ali, who said that while this isn't the best novel she's read this year, it is one she won't soon forget.
Note: "The Lighthouse" was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2012 and is published by a small company in the U.K. Currently, the paperback is not widely available in the U.S. However, it is available on the Kindle and from iBooks.
January 22, 2019
4.5 stars.
This short, grim book is all about morher-son relationship portrayed via different viewpoints.
Central figure is Futh, whose mother leaves him and his dad in his childhood, and who carries her silver lighthouse shaped perfume case with him always, hoping to meet her some day, and having a failed marriage , himself.
There is Water, the inn keeper who ends up marrying her fiance's flamboyant brother and is estranged from her initially friendly mother in law, whom her husband is still in awe of ..
Their days are showcased in a dry, matter of fact way.
Their lives intersect when Fifth takes a walking holiday in Netherlands , and the aftermath is something of a rude surprise.
Was a thought provoking read. Loved it... Would have been a perfect 5, but for the ambiguity towards the end.
Wouldn't recommend it to those who prefer a good pace in their storyline . This one is quite languid.
This short, grim book is all about morher-son relationship portrayed via different viewpoints.
Central figure is Futh, whose mother leaves him and his dad in his childhood, and who carries her silver lighthouse shaped perfume case with him always, hoping to meet her some day, and having a failed marriage , himself.
There is Water, the inn keeper who ends up marrying her fiance's flamboyant brother and is estranged from her initially friendly mother in law, whom her husband is still in awe of ..
Their days are showcased in a dry, matter of fact way.
Their lives intersect when Fifth takes a walking holiday in Netherlands , and the aftermath is something of a rude surprise.
Was a thought provoking read. Loved it... Would have been a perfect 5, but for the ambiguity towards the end.
Wouldn't recommend it to those who prefer a good pace in their storyline . This one is quite languid.
January 24, 2013
An indie novel shortlisted for the Booker is quite a feat. I have mixed feelings about this novel, some of the details were wonderful, some I felt were not necessary and some were just boring. There was very little humor and very little dialogue, yet the structure was original and I liked how the book was presented. Scents, good and bad tie all the threads of the story together and is present in both separate parts of the story. There is an unexpected ending, but I never really warmed up to not felt I knew the characters. So there was some aspects of this story to admire and I do say it is one of those kinds of books that one feels very smart to have read.
May 21, 2019
I enjoyed it and found it slightly hypnotic but I don't get the ending...can someone enlighten me??
September 21, 2016
I purchased The Lighthouse just by chance from the Oxfam Bookshop on Byres Road on my boyfriend’s birthday. I remember seeing a few copies about when it was published, but have never read any reviews of it; nor did I know anyone in real life who had read it. I started it out of intrigue on the same day (and read a large portion of it in the dim light of a Walkabout bar in central Glasgow whilst trying to drown out the sounds of very loud football supporters during an Arsenal game), and was immediately drawn in.
On the novel’s front cover, Margaret Drabble calls the prose ‘low-key’, and I think those two words sum it up perfectly. Moore’s writing is measured and understated. She has presented her story and protagonist incredibly well, and at no point did I lose interest. Each character has been intrinsically pieced together. Some are not given much of a voice, but they all come across as strikingly realistic beings. The Lighthouse is psychologically rather intense. The novel is quite funny in places too; acidly so.
I found it rather interesting that our narrator, Futh, was never identified with a first name; to me, the continual use of his surname showed just how influential his parents - and, in part, his extended family - were, both on his life and in the shaping of his personality. Moore demonstrates, through this technique, the way in which despite his personal growth and independence, he could never quite break away from his past. The geography of his past has been well but not precisely mapped; we know of a holiday he went on as a youngster to Cornwall, but are not told of the precise location that he called home. In his present, however, the name of the first town in Germany to which he travels on his week’s holiday, has been named. The juxtaposition here is interesting; whilst Futh’s present is arguably more alive because he is able to experience things, Moore makes it clear that his past is what is driving him onward. The Lighthouse is essentially a story about people and things, not places; the characters here are the pivotal beings which drive the story onward.
On the novel’s front cover, Margaret Drabble calls the prose ‘low-key’, and I think those two words sum it up perfectly. Moore’s writing is measured and understated. She has presented her story and protagonist incredibly well, and at no point did I lose interest. Each character has been intrinsically pieced together. Some are not given much of a voice, but they all come across as strikingly realistic beings. The Lighthouse is psychologically rather intense. The novel is quite funny in places too; acidly so.
I found it rather interesting that our narrator, Futh, was never identified with a first name; to me, the continual use of his surname showed just how influential his parents - and, in part, his extended family - were, both on his life and in the shaping of his personality. Moore demonstrates, through this technique, the way in which despite his personal growth and independence, he could never quite break away from his past. The geography of his past has been well but not precisely mapped; we know of a holiday he went on as a youngster to Cornwall, but are not told of the precise location that he called home. In his present, however, the name of the first town in Germany to which he travels on his week’s holiday, has been named. The juxtaposition here is interesting; whilst Futh’s present is arguably more alive because he is able to experience things, Moore makes it clear that his past is what is driving him onward. The Lighthouse is essentially a story about people and things, not places; the characters here are the pivotal beings which drive the story onward.
June 1, 2020
Man Booker Prize 2012 shortlisted. A haunting and somewhat non-linear tale of a newly separated man taking a walking holiday in Germany, reflecting on his personal and family history. 6 out of 12.
May 18, 2019
For my complete review of "The Lighthouse" visit: https://fictionophile.wordpress.com/2...
"The Lighthouse" is a debut novel with literary merit. It won the McKitterick Prize in 2013 and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, among others.
Despite that, I found that it was a bleak, forlorn, and desolate story. Futh's character was well depicted, he just wasn't interesting. Futh was a sad, unremarkable man with not many redeeming characteristics.
Ester, though interesting, was also a very sad woman. A woman to whom life seemed a major disappointment. In fact, all of the women in the book seem to have unfulfilling lives.
The book was well rendered, yet I found it to be depressing with a feeling of hopelessness. All of the characters seemed dissatisfied with their lives.
The title of the novel was very apt. Futh was looking for a 'safe harbour'.
Recommended to those who enjoy literary fiction and are not put off by rather bleak situations.
"The Lighthouse" is a debut novel with literary merit. It won the McKitterick Prize in 2013 and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, among others.
Despite that, I found that it was a bleak, forlorn, and desolate story. Futh's character was well depicted, he just wasn't interesting. Futh was a sad, unremarkable man with not many redeeming characteristics.
Ester, though interesting, was also a very sad woman. A woman to whom life seemed a major disappointment. In fact, all of the women in the book seem to have unfulfilling lives.
The book was well rendered, yet I found it to be depressing with a feeling of hopelessness. All of the characters seemed dissatisfied with their lives.
The title of the novel was very apt. Futh was looking for a 'safe harbour'.
Recommended to those who enjoy literary fiction and are not put off by rather bleak situations.
October 8, 2016
فانوس دریایی روایتی است مدرن، داستانی چندلایه، چند شخصیتی، با خط داستانی همراه با فلش بکهای تودرتو، اگر به ادبیات مدرن علاقهای ندارید ممکن است داستان برای شما گیجکننده باشد، اما اگر مشتاق باشید داستان حتماً جذاب و گیرا میشود. ارجاعات شخصیتها و پیوستگی و ارتباطهای غیرمستقیم تودرتوی آنها بسیار جالب است و نشان از پیچیدگی فکر نویسنده دارد. موضوعی که در کتاب شاخص است جدا از ارتباط غیرمستقیم شخصیتها، توصیفات ملموس از فضا و مناظر است که با ترجمه دقیق و مناسب و از همه مهمتر روان ِ مترجم، نهتنها زیبا و جذاب شده است بلکه خواندن آن روان و ساده نیز هست. با تشکر از مترجم و ناشر کتاب و با امید چاپ و ترجمه خوب و دقیق هرچه بیشتر ادبیات معاصر دنیا.
October 4, 2012
Very well written. However, as I got to around the halfway mark, I had an epiphany: I hated virtually every single character in the book. I especially hated the two main characters, Futh and Ester. I finished the book without noticing a single characteristic of either that was even slightly appealing. I found myself wondering if Futh had some form of Asperger's: his ability to understand others seemed to be pretty much nil, but then, he had no understanding of himself, either.
I finished this book, but was glad it was a library book, so I don't have to worry about disposing of it.
I finished this book, but was glad it was a library book, so I don't have to worry about disposing of it.
December 21, 2015
I enjoyed The Lighthouse and read it in three days. That said it was a strange book with its 'impotent' main character who seems incapable of doing anything well and lurches from mild embarrassment to mild embarrassment and never learns from his errors.
It's simply and well written and worth a look.
It's simply and well written and worth a look.
December 30, 2012
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore is a novel of smells. Perfumes figure strongly, as does camphor, with formaldehyde and octyl acetate making cameo appearances. The lighthouse of the title is a model, a decorative, presentation container that once held a phial of perfume. It was a present for a woman married to a chemist called Futh. The chemist and the woman had a son (also called Futh because it is a surname), who also took up chemistry. Futh the father was German and bored his wife, especially when talking about lighthouses. She took off. Futh the son is the novel’s central character.
Futh the son kept the lighthouse long after its smelly associations had evaporated. It became a son’s memento of an almost mother. A friend’s mother who lived in the house across the fence at the end of the garden had odours of her own – and Venus flytraps. Her husband had gone and she herself had a habit of entrapping boys, one of whom was her son.
Futh the younger has been married. But she has gone as well, and we find him in reflective mood. There is a need for a holiday, so he sets off to recreate a walk once completed by his father. It’s in Germany and he has to travel overseas on a ferry and stay a couple of nights in a small hotel.
Futh is not a practiced or successful traveller. If it possible to get things wrong, he will. He learns to drive late, and drives badly. He and his wife never managed children, despite repeated pregnancies, all of which aborted. A shop assistant gives him perfectly sensible advice about new boots bought specially for his walk, advice he chooses to ignore, to the detriment of his feet.
In the hotel he meets Esther, a beauty who has run a little to seed. Her breasts are still impressive, however, as is her gin consumption. She is married to Bernard. Who is the one who smells of camphor. She takes a liking top Futh’s lighthouse. He has decided for once to take it out of the pocket where he usually fondles it. Esther caresses it, covets it. Bernard’s jealousy of his wife’s proclivities is about to boil over. After all, she really should have married his brother, until she changed her mind. Futh gets sunburnt on his walking holiday, and pains of different kinds await when he returns to the hotel to be reunited with his precious lighthouse, which he thinks is still stashed away in his luggage.
Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse works very hard at being enigmatic. The immediacy of the present tense describes Futh’s holiday, with past tense reminiscences peppering his present. But somehow all of these people are eventually shallow, just too easily and willingly tempted into betrayal or rejection, states that never seem to prompt reflection or analysis. They are all inlaid with their histories, but none of them seem to have learned anything from past mistakes, except the skill of repeating them. Their inconstancy is too constant, their shared failings too predictable.
The Lighthouse is a well written and enjoyable read, but its pace is too even and its characters remain too distant. It is as if we see these people from far away through a telescope, with the sounds they make fed via microphones to our headsets. Everything is very plausible, except the people themselves, it seems. Futh is thin and bald. Esther is made-up and gone to seed. Futh the father goes on about lighthouses when on a family holiday and bores his wife accordingly. Futh the younger idolises his own lighthouse in his trousers. Meanwhile, everyone thinks about sex and most end up disloyal. The Lighhouse goes up and down, flashes on and off. It’s a single dimension in other ways as well.
Futh the son kept the lighthouse long after its smelly associations had evaporated. It became a son’s memento of an almost mother. A friend’s mother who lived in the house across the fence at the end of the garden had odours of her own – and Venus flytraps. Her husband had gone and she herself had a habit of entrapping boys, one of whom was her son.
Futh the younger has been married. But she has gone as well, and we find him in reflective mood. There is a need for a holiday, so he sets off to recreate a walk once completed by his father. It’s in Germany and he has to travel overseas on a ferry and stay a couple of nights in a small hotel.
Futh is not a practiced or successful traveller. If it possible to get things wrong, he will. He learns to drive late, and drives badly. He and his wife never managed children, despite repeated pregnancies, all of which aborted. A shop assistant gives him perfectly sensible advice about new boots bought specially for his walk, advice he chooses to ignore, to the detriment of his feet.
In the hotel he meets Esther, a beauty who has run a little to seed. Her breasts are still impressive, however, as is her gin consumption. She is married to Bernard. Who is the one who smells of camphor. She takes a liking top Futh’s lighthouse. He has decided for once to take it out of the pocket where he usually fondles it. Esther caresses it, covets it. Bernard’s jealousy of his wife’s proclivities is about to boil over. After all, she really should have married his brother, until she changed her mind. Futh gets sunburnt on his walking holiday, and pains of different kinds await when he returns to the hotel to be reunited with his precious lighthouse, which he thinks is still stashed away in his luggage.
Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse works very hard at being enigmatic. The immediacy of the present tense describes Futh’s holiday, with past tense reminiscences peppering his present. But somehow all of these people are eventually shallow, just too easily and willingly tempted into betrayal or rejection, states that never seem to prompt reflection or analysis. They are all inlaid with their histories, but none of them seem to have learned anything from past mistakes, except the skill of repeating them. Their inconstancy is too constant, their shared failings too predictable.
The Lighthouse is a well written and enjoyable read, but its pace is too even and its characters remain too distant. It is as if we see these people from far away through a telescope, with the sounds they make fed via microphones to our headsets. Everything is very plausible, except the people themselves, it seems. Futh is thin and bald. Esther is made-up and gone to seed. Futh the father goes on about lighthouses when on a family holiday and bores his wife accordingly. Futh the younger idolises his own lighthouse in his trousers. Meanwhile, everyone thinks about sex and most end up disloyal. The Lighhouse goes up and down, flashes on and off. It’s a single dimension in other ways as well.
March 3, 2013
Reviews of this book are all over the place. I can see why people would give up on it. There really isn’t a likeable character in the whole book. That, actually, I didn’t have a problem with. Unlikeable characters can be far more interesting than likeable ones just as bad guys (as long as they have some depth) can be quite compelling. We like to think of ourselves as good and likeable and so why wouldn’t we find our opposites fascinating? Maybe it says something about me that I found myself empathising with these characters more than I should have, something that I probably shouldn’t get into in a book review.
I’ve always been quite vocal about my dislike of bloated texts but I never thought I’d come along and say that a book of 192 pages—so, under 50000 words—was too long but that’s the way I felt after reading it. I know it takes time to set a mood but the author had a terrible habit of going back over the same ground in too much detail for my tastes. She covers a scene concerning a perfume bottle four times I think in some detail and it really wasn’t necessary. Yes, it’s an important scene and, yes, the protagonist does return to it again and again but that’s all we need to know, a couple of sentences, maybe a short paragraph, suggesting his return rather than having to go through it again with him; that would be more tolerable in a film where we could get different angles to make it fresh.
The book is full of symbolism and, whereas other writers hint at it—e.g. the colours in The Great Gatsby—I felt like Moore lays hers on with a trowel; did the hotel in Germany really need to be called Hellhaus and, seriously, how many people own Venue flytraps? The protagonist creates scents for a living and so as you might expect he’s acutely aware of them and I understood fully when they dredged up memories; the correlation between memory and smell is well documented.
This is a study in loneliness. Everyone is lonely. And mostly unhappy. So it’s not a light read despite the fact it’s an easy read—I gobbled it up in two days and didn’t feel like I’d rushed it. That said I did enjoy it. It was well-constructed and I liked the (inevitable?) ending. It didn’t deserve to win the Man Booker but the author does deserve to be read again.
I’ve always been quite vocal about my dislike of bloated texts but I never thought I’d come along and say that a book of 192 pages—so, under 50000 words—was too long but that’s the way I felt after reading it. I know it takes time to set a mood but the author had a terrible habit of going back over the same ground in too much detail for my tastes. She covers a scene concerning a perfume bottle four times I think in some detail and it really wasn’t necessary. Yes, it’s an important scene and, yes, the protagonist does return to it again and again but that’s all we need to know, a couple of sentences, maybe a short paragraph, suggesting his return rather than having to go through it again with him; that would be more tolerable in a film where we could get different angles to make it fresh.
The book is full of symbolism and, whereas other writers hint at it—e.g. the colours in The Great Gatsby—I felt like Moore lays hers on with a trowel; did the hotel in Germany really need to be called Hellhaus and, seriously, how many people own Venue flytraps? The protagonist creates scents for a living and so as you might expect he’s acutely aware of them and I understood fully when they dredged up memories; the correlation between memory and smell is well documented.
This is a study in loneliness. Everyone is lonely. And mostly unhappy. So it’s not a light read despite the fact it’s an easy read—I gobbled it up in two days and didn’t feel like I’d rushed it. That said I did enjoy it. It was well-constructed and I liked the (inevitable?) ending. It didn’t deserve to win the Man Booker but the author does deserve to be read again.
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