Product Description

This book is from the acclaimed author of "Voyageurs" and "The Sea Road". It will appeal to readers of historical fiction and fans of Elphinstone. The author has published eight novels and is firmly established as a writer of superb historical fiction.May, 1831, and on a tiny island off the Isle of Man, a lighthouse provides a harsh living for an unusual family. Lucy and Diya, husbandless and with three children between them, watch over the ancient light on Ellan Bride. Meanwhile the Scottish engineer, Robert Stevenson, is modernising the nation's lighthouses, and Ellan Bride - and the future of the family - are under threat. When two surveyors arrive to assess the light, tension escalates to danger point.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #235435 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Review
"The heart of this novel is a place described so finely and beguilingly that everyone who reads it will want to go to Ellan Bride." Helen Dunmore, The Times "Fuses history and fantasy into an exuberantly clever romp, swathed in the mist and spray of northern seas." Boyd Tonkin, Independent "Elphinstone's sense of place, time and atmosphere make for eerie reading and give the novel an impressive authenticity." Scotland on Sunday "This is true experimental writing: careless of taboo, teeming with ideas, elusive yet utterly controlled." Guardian "Elphinstone's sense of place, time and atmosphere make for eerie reading and give the novel an impressive authenticity... breathtaking." Vanessa Curtis, Scotland on Sunday"

From the Author
"Light, set in the 1830s, brings surveyors, imbued with the confidence of Enlightenment Edinburgh, to build a new lighthouse on a remote island. There they discover the women maintaining the old light have values rooted in other times and places and a different perspective on ‘progress’. For the island children the ensuing conflict is both an adventure and an introduction to other worlds, geographical and emotional." Margaret Elphinstone

About the Author
Margaret Elphinstone is the author of eight previous novels, including Voyageurs and The Sea Road. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies. She lives in Glasgow and teaches at the Department of English Studies at Strathclyde University.

Customer Reviews

A really great read!
What I like about Elphinstone's writing is that she can go from the universal themes (she describes, probably unintentionally, the whole of the Universal Process in the first paragraph of 'Light' while ostensibly describing the way the lighthouse works)to extracting profound moral drama out of everyday and normal happenings. Her descriptions of what it takes to keep the lighthouse running day to day and her insightful understanding of the dilemmas each character faces make this a real page turner -- like all her work.