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Die bewaker
Vuurtoringwagter Hannes Harker word met sy vrou na ’n afgeleё eiland verplaas. Hy ontdek iets wat lank in die toring weggesteek was wat hom sy balans laat verloor, en hy val. In die hospitaal vertel hy met rukke en stote aan verpleegsuster Rika sy lewensverhaal – van sy ma se geheimsinnige dood, van sy onbeheerbare jong vrou, Aletta, en van die verlate eiland waar net die vuurtoringwagters en ghwanowerkers woon. Dié twee groepe leef saam maar tog ook streng apart op een van die onherbergsaamste plekke op aarde. Met die aankoms van ’n karakter uit Aletta se verlede kom haar eie geheime onvermydelik aan die lig, net soos die pruttende spanning en onregte wat die ghwanowerkers so lank verduur het tot uitbarsting kom in ’n enkele, skokkende gebeurtenis.
Die bewaker is die verhaal van twee geslagte vuurtoringwagters – mans verbete in hulle plig, en vroue wat saam met hulle in skrikwekkende afsondering leef. Dit is geskryf in die kenmerkende meevoerende styl waarvoor Marguerite Poland so bekend is, nou vir die eerste keer in Afrikaans.
’n Roman oor die krag van geheime, die krag van die liefde en die krag van stories.
Die bewaker is die verhaal van twee geslagte vuurtoringwagters – mans verbete in hulle plig, en vroue wat saam met hulle in skrikwekkende afsondering leef. Dit is geskryf in die kenmerkende meevoerende styl waarvoor Marguerite Poland so bekend is, nou vir die eerste keer in Afrikaans.
’n Roman oor die krag van geheime, die krag van die liefde en die krag van stories.
- GenresSouth AfricaBook Club
183 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2014
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121 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
February 22, 2015
This beautiful story centres around Hannes Harker's life experiences at a lighthouse off the coast of Port Elizabeth between about 1919 and 1964. Although never specifically named the location of the lighthouse corresponds to the lighthouse on Bird Island (http://www.sa-venues.com/things-to-do...) which is part of a group of islands near Port Elizabeth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algoa_Ba...). The island inhabitants consists of the keeper and assistant keeper and their families as well as a group of guano workers which may include prisoners doing hard labour. These two groups keep to themselves on this inhospitable piece of land.
Hannes's past and present meet when he becomes lighthouse keeper in the 1960's on the island and has to return to the scene of a great family tragedy. His wife Aletta accompanies him. When Hannes is injured and has to spend time in a hospital on the mainland he ends up telling his life story to a nurse, Sister Rika, who has to assist him to distinguish between his perceptions of reality and the facts of the various events.
Marguerite Poland's uses words sparingly, but with great effect. a very worthwhile read.
Hannes's past and present meet when he becomes lighthouse keeper in the 1960's on the island and has to return to the scene of a great family tragedy. His wife Aletta accompanies him. When Hannes is injured and has to spend time in a hospital on the mainland he ends up telling his life story to a nurse, Sister Rika, who has to assist him to distinguish between his perceptions of reality and the facts of the various events.
Marguerite Poland's uses words sparingly, but with great effect. a very worthwhile read.
October 30, 2014
There’s something exquisite about the way South African authors deliver their stories to the world. I know it might sound somewhat biased, considering I am a South African myself, but I assure you that I am quite impartial when it comes to books. It’s simply an inexplicable phenomenon that I’ve noticed in good South African literature. Take, for example, Wilbur Smith: He’s a recognised author worldwide and he’s got a certain je ne sais quoi about his writing style that can only be considered South African. Lauren Beukes is another prime example of being able to capture an audience with that something-something that makes her stories stand out amongst others in the same genre. It’s rather chilling this uniquely South African voice that somehow wriggles its way out of an author’s pen, but it’s also incredibly refreshing when you’ve been binge-reading works from American authors.
The Keeper* by Marguerite Poland is one of those books that will make you realise the beauty of South African writing; the distinctive voice that forms part of a whole nation’s soul instead of just an individual person. It’s beautiful and yet it’s such a haunting voice. Nevertheless, it’s present. In The Keeper, Marguerite Poland captures this voice perfectly in her vivid imagery, her spellbinding plot-line and the bittersweet characters that we come to know during this tale. However, none of those things came close to the elegant poignancy of Poland’s words. Utterly, utterly engrossing from beginning to end, it’s as if I was transported to 1957 and could witness the relayed events first-hand. I could hear the waves, feel the wind, and taste the brine, all because of the incredibly crafted descriptions that Poland used.
If the plot summary doesn’t catch your attention – which I highly doubt will be the case – you might still want to get your hands on The Keeper, because this is a book worth studying for its impeccable writing-style.
Plainly put, I loved it.
*The Keeper is also translated into Afrikaans (called Die Bewaker) and is published by Penguin Books South Africa.
Review originally posted on:
The Keeper* by Marguerite Poland is one of those books that will make you realise the beauty of South African writing; the distinctive voice that forms part of a whole nation’s soul instead of just an individual person. It’s beautiful and yet it’s such a haunting voice. Nevertheless, it’s present. In The Keeper, Marguerite Poland captures this voice perfectly in her vivid imagery, her spellbinding plot-line and the bittersweet characters that we come to know during this tale. However, none of those things came close to the elegant poignancy of Poland’s words. Utterly, utterly engrossing from beginning to end, it’s as if I was transported to 1957 and could witness the relayed events first-hand. I could hear the waves, feel the wind, and taste the brine, all because of the incredibly crafted descriptions that Poland used.
If the plot summary doesn’t catch your attention – which I highly doubt will be the case – you might still want to get your hands on The Keeper, because this is a book worth studying for its impeccable writing-style.
Plainly put, I loved it.
*The Keeper is also translated into Afrikaans (called Die Bewaker) and is published by Penguin Books South Africa.
Review originally posted on:
December 31, 2014
"Soms laat ons die dinge wat vir ons die heiligste is in ander se sorg. Wanneer ons dit deel, leef die verhaal voort, ná ons en ons tyd. 'n Daad van geloof en van liefde." (p. 182)
January 30, 2015
“A lighthouse either defeats or it owns you. There is nothing in between.”
The lighthouse keeper Hannes Harker is recovering from a fall in a remote lighthouse. Nursed back to health, both mentally and physically in hospital, helped by Sister Rika, this taciturn, secretive man is slowly drawn out of his shell, and recounts his life story. He’s explaining some of what it’s like to live with “the light”: “And every two years or so you are uprooted and have to start again. You never know where you belong. The only certainty is a light. Some light. Somewhere.”
Marguerite Poland’s latest novel is a brooding, yet tautly written account of what it was like to be a lighthouse keeper before lighthouses were automated. The story is set in the early 1960s, some years after Hannes’s wife Aletta has left him, seemingly disappeared for good. But twinned alongside this later narrative is the story of Hannes’s mother, Louisa, herself married to a lighthouse keeper, Hannes’s father Karel. Her mysterious death when Hannes was a boy away at boarding school with his brother, in the 1920s, casts a shadow over his life and continues to guiltily haunt him.
The two strands are disparate, yet ingeniously linked by the shell lighthouse that the mother Louisa originally started – a miniature lighthouse made of shells – hidden all these years, and then discovered by Aletta, Hannes’s bored, isolated wife, who then starts adding, rather clumsily to the half-finished lighthouse. And the story unfolds – Hannes becoming more and more open with Sister Rika, revealing a life of tending to the every present light – a light that in turn drives the isolated Aletta into a quiet desperation as Hannes retreats into his duty. The light is constant: “Twenty seconds, then again. Twenty seconds, then again. Twenty seconds ... She would drag the curtains across the windows, rasping the rusty rings on the rail.”
Poland captures well the especial isolation of those who married into the light. From the fresh food that runs short, to the diet of endless plates of fish, to the crashing, daily sounds of the gannets and the small world of the islands where the lighthouses are situated. Hannes has an assistant, with his own wife, although she is merry and well-adapted to the life, but Aletta struggles daily against the coruscating smallness of that world.
There are the workers on the island – including a well-rendered, realised portrait of Misklip, a Coloured man who’s been there over 30 years. His real name lost to the keepers known only by this derogatory moniker, Misklip’s personality imbues the narrative with added poignancy.
But this is apartheid South Africa, and the two worlds of keepers and guano workers are not to mingle. And it’s when the two worlds do attempt contact, some gentle touch that the violence of this interaction tears through their lives, whether in Hannes’s narrative or that of his mother and father in the 1920s.
The stories told, the secrets gently tumbling out, the real keeper of the narrative is Sister Rika, who has listened to Hannes speak about his life, his tempestuous wife, his gentle, long dead mother. Repository of the story, she beams her own light on the tortured psychology of Hannes’s explanations, trying to affect a change that will linger through his own days and clear away his own darkness.
This is an affecting, haunting and quite beautiful novel. Poland’s voice is startling – her style evoking the isolation of all these souls lost in their own worlds, as well as the landscape of a windswept world where trees don’t grow, and little can flourish at all except without superhuman strength and encouragement. The light keeper’s life and that of his family was a harsh one – and Poland’s portrait of the men who chose such a life ring convincingly true. A sensitively told story that lingers on long after the initial reading, the wives trying to adapt to the lives the men they love have chosen, saying goodbye to their children going away to school on boats, while the wind screams and the light sweeps on and on and on
The lighthouse keeper Hannes Harker is recovering from a fall in a remote lighthouse. Nursed back to health, both mentally and physically in hospital, helped by Sister Rika, this taciturn, secretive man is slowly drawn out of his shell, and recounts his life story. He’s explaining some of what it’s like to live with “the light”: “And every two years or so you are uprooted and have to start again. You never know where you belong. The only certainty is a light. Some light. Somewhere.”
Marguerite Poland’s latest novel is a brooding, yet tautly written account of what it was like to be a lighthouse keeper before lighthouses were automated. The story is set in the early 1960s, some years after Hannes’s wife Aletta has left him, seemingly disappeared for good. But twinned alongside this later narrative is the story of Hannes’s mother, Louisa, herself married to a lighthouse keeper, Hannes’s father Karel. Her mysterious death when Hannes was a boy away at boarding school with his brother, in the 1920s, casts a shadow over his life and continues to guiltily haunt him.
The two strands are disparate, yet ingeniously linked by the shell lighthouse that the mother Louisa originally started – a miniature lighthouse made of shells – hidden all these years, and then discovered by Aletta, Hannes’s bored, isolated wife, who then starts adding, rather clumsily to the half-finished lighthouse. And the story unfolds – Hannes becoming more and more open with Sister Rika, revealing a life of tending to the every present light – a light that in turn drives the isolated Aletta into a quiet desperation as Hannes retreats into his duty. The light is constant: “Twenty seconds, then again. Twenty seconds, then again. Twenty seconds ... She would drag the curtains across the windows, rasping the rusty rings on the rail.”
Poland captures well the especial isolation of those who married into the light. From the fresh food that runs short, to the diet of endless plates of fish, to the crashing, daily sounds of the gannets and the small world of the islands where the lighthouses are situated. Hannes has an assistant, with his own wife, although she is merry and well-adapted to the life, but Aletta struggles daily against the coruscating smallness of that world.
There are the workers on the island – including a well-rendered, realised portrait of Misklip, a Coloured man who’s been there over 30 years. His real name lost to the keepers known only by this derogatory moniker, Misklip’s personality imbues the narrative with added poignancy.
But this is apartheid South Africa, and the two worlds of keepers and guano workers are not to mingle. And it’s when the two worlds do attempt contact, some gentle touch that the violence of this interaction tears through their lives, whether in Hannes’s narrative or that of his mother and father in the 1920s.
The stories told, the secrets gently tumbling out, the real keeper of the narrative is Sister Rika, who has listened to Hannes speak about his life, his tempestuous wife, his gentle, long dead mother. Repository of the story, she beams her own light on the tortured psychology of Hannes’s explanations, trying to affect a change that will linger through his own days and clear away his own darkness.
This is an affecting, haunting and quite beautiful novel. Poland’s voice is startling – her style evoking the isolation of all these souls lost in their own worlds, as well as the landscape of a windswept world where trees don’t grow, and little can flourish at all except without superhuman strength and encouragement. The light keeper’s life and that of his family was a harsh one – and Poland’s portrait of the men who chose such a life ring convincingly true. A sensitively told story that lingers on long after the initial reading, the wives trying to adapt to the lives the men they love have chosen, saying goodbye to their children going away to school on boats, while the wind screams and the light sweeps on and on and on
December 24, 2014
I can only highly recommend The Keeper by Marguerite Poland. It is written in the most beautiful, lyrical, haunting prose. I took my time reading this book as each word and sentence had to be read twice or more to appreciate the beauty of Marguerite Poland's writing. The central character is Hannes Harker, senior lighthouse keeper of a lighthouse somewhere in the Eastern Cape. His father was a lighthouse keeper before him. It is the story of Hannes and his young wife, Aletta, destined for one of the loneliest and most confined postings in the service. Here they are forced to challenge and confront the three ‘commandments’ implicit in the lives of those who serve the island: never leave the light, never fall and never cross the line. It is also the story of Hannes's parents, Karel and Louisa. The story goes back and forth between the 2 generations when Hannes reveals his life story to Sister Rika who becomes his keeper as well. I loved this book and award it 5 stars
November 21, 2015
I loved this book, as I do most of Poland's works. A compelling and captivating story written in her usual evocative and lyrical prose. Highly recommended.
November 22, 2025
This is a beautifully tragic book. I sympathized with a number of characters in the book. The main characters of Hannes and Aletta Harker seem to be driven apart due to the confining nature of their little island. Hannes' dedication to his job as lighthouse keeper drove Aletta from him. The story was woven in such a manner that the reader knows more than the characters do. We know before Hannes does of the events that led to his mother committing suicide. We know before he does that his wife, Aletta, fled the island not for infidelity reasons, but because her soul, her being was being constricted by the desolate and isolated confines of the island. I felt more sympathy for her than Hannes. While he certainly endured hardships, he chose the life of an isolated lighthouse keeper. Aletta was merely the faithful partner who had to accompany him. Rika, the nurse that oversees Hannes' recovery in hospital after he had a serious fall, slowly gains his trust and comes to learn his story. She remarks that she is his keeper. The novel ends with her thoughts. It is implied that Hannes' sets off to find his brother, Fred, who he has not seen in decades. And that he tracks down Aletta and the two reconcile. Both acknowledging that they need each other. The ending is open to interpretation as it seems this meeting between Hannes and Aletta is how Rika imagined it. As the reader you can chose her version of events or imagine a slightly different interaction. I think Rika's vision is beautiful and gives power to the everlasting bond that a married couple undertakes when they truly love each other.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 11, 2021
My mother, a school librarian, believed there was a right time for every book. I have owned a copy of The Keeper, a charity store find at R30, for years. I even tried to read it a while back. But now, it’s done. And I am bereft. Utterly, utterly enthralling. Every word so carefully considered, so carefully crafted. There’s nothing casual about the way the author uses language. Such intensity! Such weight!
A beautiful, achingly sad story - with stories within stories. Lighthouses, birds, the sea, silences, motherhood, race, remorse, loss... and love. Always love. Extraordinary. I’d give it six stars if I could. Now was the right time for this book and me.
A beautiful, achingly sad story - with stories within stories. Lighthouses, birds, the sea, silences, motherhood, race, remorse, loss... and love. Always love. Extraordinary. I’d give it six stars if I could. Now was the right time for this book and me.
May 5, 2022
It’s a book I initially had some trouble getting into. For some reason there was something pushing me away. There’s a heaviness around it, especially in the beginning of the book as the story is being presented to reader. But the more I got immersed into it the more I fell for it. It’s the first book I read of Marguerite Poland, in my quest to read the big SA authors and it won’t certainly be my last. The poetic way of her prose is unlike any other author I’ve read before and her unique descriptions bring you back to the sea, you can almost feel it’s breeze and the salty air when you turn the pages.
April 22, 2018
A romantic setting and a well-constructed plot. Marguerite Poland creates a sense of place and atmosphere through meticulous detail, poetic descriptions and imagery. An enthralling story with much interpersonal drama (perhaps even a touch of melodrama, for example in the angst and demise of Hannes Harker's mother). Marguerite's novels have believable South African settings and tug at the heart-strings; I enjoyed this read very much. 4,5
June 3, 2023
Do not take people's word for it, this book is anything but boring... The style of writing is fabulous, and I think it takes an extremely skilled writer to be able to do what Poland has done in this novel. If you want a book that will expand your vocabulary and aid in your English, this is the book for you.
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July 8, 2021I so enjoyed this. It’s especially meaningful during Covid lockdown which resonates with the isolation on the island. I loved the way the story is revealed in the memories of the complex and believable characters.
March 6, 2022
I really enjoyed this book. Set on an island in the Eastern Cape. The lighthouse story came alive for me and the characters were very believable. It was a story filled with emotion and described the time exceptionally well. I can recommend it.
May 7, 2017
A lovely book exploring the life of a lighthouse keeper and his journey through the ages and the legacy of his life and family. Beautifully written.
March 2, 2018
Sad and haunting
January 22, 2025
A most beautifully written story by a wonderful South African Author. It's poignant and lyrical and just brilliant!
I highly recommend this novel!!!
I highly recommend this novel!!!
November 17, 2015
Every once in a while there’s a South Africa author whose name should be on everyone’s lips – and Marguerite Poland deserves a spot in that sphere. Where to begin … Her writing is pure magic, pure and simple, and in The Keeper, she nests story within story, drawing readers into the claustrophobic, wind- and wave-swept world that is the island where the bulk of the tale plays out.
We begin with Hannes Harker, the lighthouse keeper, who has fallen and is severely injured while automating the last lighthouse on the South African coast that requires this. The era of lighthouse keepers is over, and Hannes has his own painful memories with regard to this ending.
While recovering in hospital, he begins to unburden himself to nursing sister Rika, who takes on the role of focaliser trying to make sense of the mystery. We plunge deep into the past, to the tragedy of why Hannes’s mother drowned herself in a well, and also into the near-past where we meet Aletta, Hannes’s estranged wife. The lighthouse presides over everything, both lightgiver and beacon, and brooding mistress.
People cope with the isolated existence on the island in different ways. Their motivations for living there differ wildly. For some it’s an all-consuming vocation, as it is for Hannes and his father before him. For others it’s a prison sentence, to be endured. Others make the best of it, and find their coping mechanisms. All are twisted in some way by this encapsulated environment, trapped even.
Symbols abound, from the macabre badge of office represented by the great rusty shark hook to the delicate lighthouse sculpture made from shells painstakingly collected by gentle hands. Make of these images what you will – they are enduring.
But it’s not so much the setting and the tragedies of the players strutting the dismal stage Poland has set up, but also her exquisite use of language. Birds abound, and for those of you who’ve read Taken Captive By Birds, you’ll understand those moments when she adds this typical signature throughout The Keeper. But then there’s also her understanding of environment, of the ocean’s mercurial moods, that paint in broad brush strokes the essence of the setting. I was instantly transported and enthralled.
Poland paints a story told not so much by what is shared, but also that which is left unsaid. The ending, much like real life, leaves pieces unfinished, conclusions untold, that hurt, give hope and also leave a delicious ambiguity.
The fact that The Keeper won the 2015 Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice award comes as no surprise. The tale haunts me, and has made its way to my Top Reads for 2015 shelf.
We begin with Hannes Harker, the lighthouse keeper, who has fallen and is severely injured while automating the last lighthouse on the South African coast that requires this. The era of lighthouse keepers is over, and Hannes has his own painful memories with regard to this ending.
While recovering in hospital, he begins to unburden himself to nursing sister Rika, who takes on the role of focaliser trying to make sense of the mystery. We plunge deep into the past, to the tragedy of why Hannes’s mother drowned herself in a well, and also into the near-past where we meet Aletta, Hannes’s estranged wife. The lighthouse presides over everything, both lightgiver and beacon, and brooding mistress.
People cope with the isolated existence on the island in different ways. Their motivations for living there differ wildly. For some it’s an all-consuming vocation, as it is for Hannes and his father before him. For others it’s a prison sentence, to be endured. Others make the best of it, and find their coping mechanisms. All are twisted in some way by this encapsulated environment, trapped even.
Symbols abound, from the macabre badge of office represented by the great rusty shark hook to the delicate lighthouse sculpture made from shells painstakingly collected by gentle hands. Make of these images what you will – they are enduring.
But it’s not so much the setting and the tragedies of the players strutting the dismal stage Poland has set up, but also her exquisite use of language. Birds abound, and for those of you who’ve read Taken Captive By Birds, you’ll understand those moments when she adds this typical signature throughout The Keeper. But then there’s also her understanding of environment, of the ocean’s mercurial moods, that paint in broad brush strokes the essence of the setting. I was instantly transported and enthralled.
Poland paints a story told not so much by what is shared, but also that which is left unsaid. The ending, much like real life, leaves pieces unfinished, conclusions untold, that hurt, give hope and also leave a delicious ambiguity.
The fact that The Keeper won the 2015 Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice award comes as no surprise. The tale haunts me, and has made its way to my Top Reads for 2015 shelf.
December 5, 2014
The Keeper by Marguerite Poland
” Exquisitely Marguerite Poland captures the sea in all its moods, from limpid blue calm, to the green wastes, to the grey of the storm.”
Eloquently beautiful story of the lighthouse (off the cape of Port Elizabeth) the men who served her and were obsessed by her, and the women, marooned in isolation on the bleak, rocky island where she stood, who came to hate her. The Keeper, fiction laced with fact is the story of two generations of lighthouse keepers. Besides the keepers the island is also inhabited by guano workers, some permanent and some convicts. . .two communities confined together, yet rigidly separated. The plot is poignant, even heartbreaking at times, but is believable and realistic in its attention to detail. A most enjoyable read! Marguerite Poland is the recipient of two national Lifetime Awards for English Literature from the Department of Arts and Culture (2005) and SALA (South African Literary Awards) 2010.
” Exquisitely Marguerite Poland captures the sea in all its moods, from limpid blue calm, to the green wastes, to the grey of the storm.”
Eloquently beautiful story of the lighthouse (off the cape of Port Elizabeth) the men who served her and were obsessed by her, and the women, marooned in isolation on the bleak, rocky island where she stood, who came to hate her. The Keeper, fiction laced with fact is the story of two generations of lighthouse keepers. Besides the keepers the island is also inhabited by guano workers, some permanent and some convicts. . .two communities confined together, yet rigidly separated. The plot is poignant, even heartbreaking at times, but is believable and realistic in its attention to detail. A most enjoyable read! Marguerite Poland is the recipient of two national Lifetime Awards for English Literature from the Department of Arts and Culture (2005) and SALA (South African Literary Awards) 2010.
June 27, 2016
Hmm, a bit flimsy, maybe? At 183 pages, this book felt a little thin. The upside was though, it was easy to slip into my bag and take to the appointment and read while I waited.
The Keeper tells the stories of lighthouse keepers back before the lights were automated. These men and their families spent months in very isolated places. All they ate was fish, all they smelled was the sea, and guano (penguin poop). So I suppose it didn't really matter what they ate, it all tasted the same. Hannes is the protagonist in our story. He is born to be a lighthouse keeper. His father was, and he grew up on the island where he now keeps watch. Aletta, his wife, not so much. She is restless and unhappy.
My full review is here.
The Keeper tells the stories of lighthouse keepers back before the lights were automated. These men and their families spent months in very isolated places. All they ate was fish, all they smelled was the sea, and guano (penguin poop). So I suppose it didn't really matter what they ate, it all tasted the same. Hannes is the protagonist in our story. He is born to be a lighthouse keeper. His father was, and he grew up on the island where he now keeps watch. Aletta, his wife, not so much. She is restless and unhappy.
My full review is here.
February 1, 2015
This book was superbly crafted and had me engaged and enthralled from the very first sentence to the end!
I love the author's use of minimal language that explodes with meaning, upon being read. Characters are so real you feel see and hear them as you read becoming a part of their lives - engrossed and captivated by their experiences and emotions.
A truly excellent book that looks at love, it's power to isolate and withhold and its power to endure.
"Sometimes we leave what is most sacred to us in another's care. To revive the meaning and intent we choose to give. In giving the story lives beyond us and our time. An act of faith - of love."
I love the author's use of minimal language that explodes with meaning, upon being read. Characters are so real you feel see and hear them as you read becoming a part of their lives - engrossed and captivated by their experiences and emotions.
A truly excellent book that looks at love, it's power to isolate and withhold and its power to endure.
"Sometimes we leave what is most sacred to us in another's care. To revive the meaning and intent we choose to give. In giving the story lives beyond us and our time. An act of faith - of love."
May 19, 2015
Die bewaker het my totaal oorrompel en betower: die poëtiese, liriese beskrywings van die afgeleë eiland, die twee geslagte bewakers se liefde vir en obsessie met die vuurtoring, hulle vrouens wat ʼn lewe van afsondering en eensaamheid lei. Die jong Aletta wat alleen in die ou huis op die maat van die grammofoon dans, Louisa, Hannes se ma, wat een vir een die klein skulpies wat die kind vir haar aandra aan die minuskule vuurtorinkie plak, of Misklip, die ghwanowerker, wat teer met sy onwettige, uitgeteerde kat gesels, roep beelde op wat lank na die lees van die verhaal by my spook. Meesleurend. Beeldskoon. Hierna wil ek al Marguerite Poland se boeke lees.
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October 1, 2015- Why does one give a story into another's keeping - and why, after so many years of silence? -
- Some of us are simply not born to be brave. -
- Loneliness does not arise so much from something lost as from a longing fro something well remembered. Isolation cares nothing for memory. -
- The angriest people are always afraid. -
- Sometimes we leave what is most sacred to us in another's care. To revive the meaning and intent, we choose to give. In giving, the story lives beyond us and our time. An act of faith - of love.
February 14, 2016
Beautifully written; there can't be many books which evoke the call of the gannets, the crashing of the waves on the rocks and the isolation of living in a lighthouse quite as well as this one. The story was engaging and the characters believable, but I would have liked a clearer ending! The author basically asks us to imagine what happened next which is either a cop out or creative thinking, depending on your point of view.
February 1, 2015
Looks like I'm the only one who did not enjoy this book. If it weren't for the last few incredibly frustrating chapters, I might have given it 3 stars. Beautiful prose and yes, the atmosphere and the harshness of the keepers' life and especially the lives of the wives is vividly portrayed. But there it ends. I was sorely disappointed.
March 28, 2015
Slow, but masterful. If you enjoy poetic, descriptive prose, and don't mind it getting in the way of the story, you'll love this book. Having said that, the ending was worth the journey. An inspiration!
November 2, 2015
This book was annoying to read. Mainly because of the short abrupt sentences.
January 2, 2016
Beautiful book. A gentle look at the life of a lighthouse keeper spanning a couple of generations. This was a lovely read, highly recommend.
May 27, 2016
183 pages = read in 23 days... should be an indication.
June 9, 2016
Beautifully written and very evocative of this era in South Africa.
December 21, 2022
Absolutely beautiful
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews