The Lamplighters

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Eventually, I get Sid down to the generator. His hair is the strangest color, almost white but not quite, and not the white that comes with age. There’s a tremor of recognition in a dark part of my brain, but it breaks apart when I reach for it.

Obviously the main plot thread is the question of what happened to the 3 men, but Stonex does a good job exploring the many inner workings of the character's lives - diving into themes about family, the past, guilt and truth. So on the one hand while I said the story's main plot was obvious it actually kinda isn't, in many ways this book as about everything except the exact reason the men disappeared. BUT-if you are intrigued by this real bit of history and would like to read this author’s idea of what might have occurred-this story is fascinating, though a bit DRY in its story telling style. In this blog post, we will take a closer look at the ending of The Lamplighters and explain what really happened to the three men. We will examine the various clues and hints throughout the book that point to the truth and offer our own interpretation of the ending.In 1992 a writer, Dan Sharp, approaches the wives of Arthur and Bill, and Vince’s girlfriend at the time. He writes adventure stories based on the sea but now he wants to write about the disappearances from the Maiden. Beautiful, absorbing and utterly riveting, The Lamplightersis a hymn to loneliness, to the sea, and to the stories we allow ourselves to believe when we are alone. I treasured every moment of this dazzlingly accomplished and completely unforgettable novel.” –Rosie Walsh, author of The Love of My Life The impossibility of knowing a person fully is also a theme. Do I know what this man or woman I love is truly capable of? Is there a darker side? Perhaps even tending toward violence? Does solitude exacerbate untoward symptoms of dysfunction? Will loneliness and the absence of communication send grief spiraling toward a violent destination? These are all questions that Stones explores, probing the behavior of people who don’t understand their frailties, their absolute limits. Superbly accomplished… The Lamplighters is a whodunnit, horror novel, ghost story and fantastically gripping psychological investigation rolled into one. It is also a pitch-perfect piece of writing.” –The Guardian (London) Hello Emma and thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions. I wondered if you could first tell our readers a little bit about your writing process. Has it changed over the past couple of years?

What really got on my nerves in the first half, however, was the constant – or really very frequent – hinting at dark secrets that would only be revealed in the second half of the book. It became stale very fast to be told by each of the characters that something happened in the past. One of the ideas that is explored in The Lamplighters is job automation and the sense of working in a manual job that won’t necessarily exist for much longer. Was this an idea you were keen to explore? While there are a couple of nail-biting and tense moments, I would say overall the story is more of a character study than a thriller, I see some other reviewers deducted points for this not being a more classic story structure. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves? Each of the characters was broken in some way, which just added to feel of this book following on the same trend of cliched mystery novels of recent years. This was not unlike a Ruth Ware novel.

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The writing is impeccable; she has a very lyrical style of description that some may find extraneous or detracting. I did not. I loved it. Once again, I love poetry.

William “Bill” Walker is Assistant Keeper. He’s younger, has small children at home, and doesn’t seem to be ‘in love’ with his wife, Jenny. Jenny is emotionally needy but also supportive of her husband. After twenty years, Jenny thinks that Bill may still come home. With a small cast of not entirely likable characters, Stonex successfully makes us invested in what happens (and what happened). We know going in that this is a tragedy, and it turns out to be even more tragic than the initial description would have us believe. But despite the many traumas, the persistent grief, and the injustices we discover, The Lamplighters is not entirely bleak. There’s an elegiac beauty to be found here that brings to mind the poetry of Poe or Dylan Thomas. I thought your description of grief was incredibly moving and beautifully written. Were you inspired by any other works of art that deal with grief when writing this section? Character oriented, this is an atmospheric undertaking, a slow, quiet mystery. For me it was an immersive read. A real story of missing keepers from the 1900s in Scotland from the Flannan Island lighthouse was the impetus for this story. I liked that the timeline jumped between when the men went missing and 20 years into the future, with the lasting effect it had left. I also loved the chapters where their wives were speaking to the author, I’ve never read anything quite like that before. My only complaint was that I struggled in general with the writing style. I was unwell when I read this book so it’s possible that this affected my reading. But, I couldn’t get fully immersed in the book because the writing style didn’t suit me personally. That being said, I really enjoyed the ending and felt very moved, this definitely boosted my feelings on the book a little!There was something I really enjoyed in this book, however. For a debut novel, it was oozing with atmosphere and relevant details of life as a lighthouse keeper. I like the idea of that shell being returned to the sea. All that travelling over millions of years, all that effort, rolling in the grind of the prehistoric wash, only to be spat up on a distant shore…’ Sure, its nice to read what I affectionately call "palate cleansers" or "brain candy", before diving into a more challenging and thoughtful read, but I enjoy the meatiness of a well-thought out novel that makes me think and ponder while reading. At the cemetery, Helen meets Dan Martin, the writer who had been researching the disappearance of the lighthouse keepers and had spoken to Helen years ago, without revealing his true identity.