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Lamplighter
Old World lamplighters once lit the streets of cities like Constantinople, Alexandria and Rome. In the countryside, in the new colonies, the Lamplighter doesn’t light passages through the dark; he lights perimeters against it, and the wildernesses beyond.
In the tiny South Island beach settlement of Porbeagle, Candle is apprentice to his grandfather, Ignis. But as the community prepares to celebrate the Lamplighter’s retirement, old stories take on darker hues. If the origins of folklore are in a sunken history of violence and prejudice, what is the price of Candle’s freedom?
Inhabiting a luminous space between realism and parable, between an all-too-familiar contemporary New Zealand and a magical otherworld, Lamplighter is as captivating as it is unsettling. It is a remarkable debut from the winner of the 2012 Adam prize.
In the tiny South Island beach settlement of Porbeagle, Candle is apprentice to his grandfather, Ignis. But as the community prepares to celebrate the Lamplighter’s retirement, old stories take on darker hues. If the origins of folklore are in a sunken history of violence and prejudice, what is the price of Candle’s freedom?
Inhabiting a luminous space between realism and parable, between an all-too-familiar contemporary New Zealand and a magical otherworld, Lamplighter is as captivating as it is unsettling. It is a remarkable debut from the winner of the 2012 Adam prize.
157 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
46 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 5, 2015
Lamplighter is a marvellous and fantastical piece of New Zealand Gothic, set in the fictional South Island town of Porbeagle, whose inhabitants gather for communal life-drawing classes in the village hall while the eponymous Lamplighter ritually lights the torches on the outskirts of town against the darkness of monsters real and imagined.
The main character is the lamplighter's grandson a young man only known by his symbolic nickname of Candle. He is a sensitive soul who lives uneasily amid a largely ageing population where his homosexuality makes him a target for bullying, and much of the story is his internal landscape as he makes sense of the world around him through myth and story.
Candle is also in unrequited love with a friend and in thrall to his alcoholic, abusive grandfather, who clings to his now-defunct role as village lamplighter along with the traditions and stories attached to it. Both Candle and Ignis are characters who live largely in their own heads. The theme of people and societies who can only live in the world through a filter of folklore is interrogated to powerful degree as Lamplighter questions whether the community of Porbeagle is ultimately doomed.
Lamplighter is a powerful work of magic realism, a book about a community and the way dark stories can mask an even darker history. My only complaint is that the book could easily have been twice as long, and the reader is left with many unanswered questions and dangling plot threads. Donovan Brown is a remarkable writer and I look forward to reading his future work.
The main character is the lamplighter's grandson a young man only known by his symbolic nickname of Candle. He is a sensitive soul who lives uneasily amid a largely ageing population where his homosexuality makes him a target for bullying, and much of the story is his internal landscape as he makes sense of the world around him through myth and story.
Candle is also in unrequited love with a friend and in thrall to his alcoholic, abusive grandfather, who clings to his now-defunct role as village lamplighter along with the traditions and stories attached to it. Both Candle and Ignis are characters who live largely in their own heads. The theme of people and societies who can only live in the world through a filter of folklore is interrogated to powerful degree as Lamplighter questions whether the community of Porbeagle is ultimately doomed.
Lamplighter is a powerful work of magic realism, a book about a community and the way dark stories can mask an even darker history. My only complaint is that the book could easily have been twice as long, and the reader is left with many unanswered questions and dangling plot threads. Donovan Brown is a remarkable writer and I look forward to reading his future work.
July 24, 2025
To say that Kerry Donovan Brown has a way with words would be an upmost understatement. The metaphors, similes and personification that is intertwined in the descriptions are beautiful without being excessive and unimaginable. Each time I would (reluctantly) put down this book and go back to what seemed like a rather bland real world in comparison, I continued to see things with a heightened sense of colour and beauty, as my mind was enhanced by Kerry's style of writing.
For the reader who likes descriptive and slightly magical writing, this book is for you. It couldn't be wholly categorized as a fantasy because the author stops short of taking you completely out of this world, yet there is mystery, fantastical beings and objects, and colour unlike in reality. You'll escape into a small village with relatable, yet weirdly-traditional locals who make up a loyal and tight-knit community (how could you not be tight-knit when you come together to do nude drawing of the village leader?).
This book is nothing like anything I've read before and is a remarkable achievement as a first novel for the author.
For the reader who likes descriptive and slightly magical writing, this book is for you. It couldn't be wholly categorized as a fantasy because the author stops short of taking you completely out of this world, yet there is mystery, fantastical beings and objects, and colour unlike in reality. You'll escape into a small village with relatable, yet weirdly-traditional locals who make up a loyal and tight-knit community (how could you not be tight-knit when you come together to do nude drawing of the village leader?).
This book is nothing like anything I've read before and is a remarkable achievement as a first novel for the author.
March 27, 2014
Donovan-Brown pens a fine and eloquent prose, rich with detail and depth. He has created a tiny South Island settlement, Porbeagle, a village lost in the transition of time: where computer games and modern technology have been overshadowed by dark fables and folklore. Where the last Lamplighter is about to retire, and his apprentice, Candle, will never claim the position. Where technology will replace the traditional and dark histories shall come to life.
The cover is beautiful, as moody and subtle as the text - dreamy watercolors, monochromatic shades of sepia depicting the old man and his apprentice - distracted - on the edge of the swamp. It summarises the tale well, for the writing has a sort of murky other-worldness to it. It could be historic, it could be present. It could even have shades of future dystopia.
Candle, a teenage boy, is our protagonist. It is not his real name, but more a "title" from his apprenticeship. He lives in a small town, where his homosexuality has cast shadows on his relationships. His best friend (and lover), Rib, himself a former apprentice-lamplighter (and now an aquarium guide) with his love of spooky tales. Like Wet Pete, the drowned man returned from the dead, and the mysterious doggod. But there are darker shadows lurking - the truth behind Wet Pete and the Lamplighter himself, Candle's gruff old grandfather.
The writing is rich and vivid, the sort of tale that should be savoured slow. It flows at a smooth, deliberate pace that fully submerses the reader into the murky world.
This reading copy came courtesy of Victoria University Press, via Booksellers NZ.
The cover is beautiful, as moody and subtle as the text - dreamy watercolors, monochromatic shades of sepia depicting the old man and his apprentice - distracted - on the edge of the swamp. It summarises the tale well, for the writing has a sort of murky other-worldness to it. It could be historic, it could be present. It could even have shades of future dystopia.
Candle, a teenage boy, is our protagonist. It is not his real name, but more a "title" from his apprenticeship. He lives in a small town, where his homosexuality has cast shadows on his relationships. His best friend (and lover), Rib, himself a former apprentice-lamplighter (and now an aquarium guide) with his love of spooky tales. Like Wet Pete, the drowned man returned from the dead, and the mysterious doggod. But there are darker shadows lurking - the truth behind Wet Pete and the Lamplighter himself, Candle's gruff old grandfather.
The writing is rich and vivid, the sort of tale that should be savoured slow. It flows at a smooth, deliberate pace that fully submerses the reader into the murky world.
This reading copy came courtesy of Victoria University Press, via Booksellers NZ.
January 1, 2020
This was a magical book to start my year with. I started it this morning sipping tea with my friends dog on my lap. I went swimming, I saw the coast with my kids, I listened to music. I finished the second half on the balcony with the red setting sun.
The Lamplighter is a simple and perfectly realised magic realist coming of age tale. It follows Candle and his community as their small southern village enters a new era. It's Aotearoa but it's not, there are ibis and gaslights but there are also rays, fantails and video games. The setting is a real strength of the book, I desperately want to visit Porbeagle.
I swiftly fell in love with Candle and his family, his parents are the best. I liked Candle's purity of heart and I was delighted to find that he carried that tenderness in one hand but held real bravery and self knowledge in the other. I like that, although he is young, he wasn't wussy, he wasn’t a push-over or confused. I liked the times when Candle stood his ground and the times when he quietly observed. I liked that the parents weren't only Candles parents too, I like that they had very formed characters away from him. I want to read a book about his mum, a book about his dad, a book about his Granna and a book about Rib and Emerald.
I think this short novel was really well paced, just as you are wondering if anything much will happen a lot does all in a rush and the foggy crescendo is riveting.
I could say heaps more about this. It just was a real delicious muddy treat. I'd highly recommend it and it's going straight into my top three books by writers from Aotearoa.
The Lamplighter is a simple and perfectly realised magic realist coming of age tale. It follows Candle and his community as their small southern village enters a new era. It's Aotearoa but it's not, there are ibis and gaslights but there are also rays, fantails and video games. The setting is a real strength of the book, I desperately want to visit Porbeagle.
I swiftly fell in love with Candle and his family, his parents are the best. I liked Candle's purity of heart and I was delighted to find that he carried that tenderness in one hand but held real bravery and self knowledge in the other. I like that, although he is young, he wasn't wussy, he wasn’t a push-over or confused. I liked the times when Candle stood his ground and the times when he quietly observed. I liked that the parents weren't only Candles parents too, I like that they had very formed characters away from him. I want to read a book about his mum, a book about his dad, a book about his Granna and a book about Rib and Emerald.
I think this short novel was really well paced, just as you are wondering if anything much will happen a lot does all in a rush and the foggy crescendo is riveting.
I could say heaps more about this. It just was a real delicious muddy treat. I'd highly recommend it and it's going straight into my top three books by writers from Aotearoa.
February 28, 2025
This book, like several other good books I’ve read, was on the sale table at my local library.
What a strange, wonderful and convoluted book. What beautiful language and style.
It’s the story of a small fictional town in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ways in which ideas, stories, traditions and new experiences meet, evolve and confound and survive.
What a strange, wonderful and convoluted book. What beautiful language and style.
It’s the story of a small fictional town in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ways in which ideas, stories, traditions and new experiences meet, evolve and confound and survive.
March 18, 2014
A beautiful story
August 26, 2020
an absolutely gorgeous book
November 19, 2021
Interesting & quirky. Development of a world that is bleak with typical Gothic foreboding of worse to come. Themes of grief/loss, homophobia, family, technology. But in the end maybe too deep for me - I couldn't quite grasp the meaning.
August 20, 2016
I didn't enjoy this debut New Zealand novel. It was well written, but I personally found the tone and atmosphere unpleasant and the oddness of the setting bizarre. The setting purports to be a small New Zealand town but, with its peculiar town role of 'Lamplighter' and the even more peculiar biblical chanting about the dark and the flood it appears to be more of a cult. There are dark, freakish and magical realist overtones with the stories of Wet Pete and the doggod, and the narrative structure is deliberately fractured to add a mysterious and portentous weight to events. The story is ultimately about masculine violence and sexuality and I found the female characterisation stereotypical and unconvincing. However, this new writer has been well-received which proves that, as with all art, much of how it is received is about personal taste.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews