The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman was published in 2012 and it was the first novel by the author who was born and grew up in Western Australia.
This one was a good read although at times a really tragic one.
The tale begins in 1926 and the setting is Janus Rock which is a tiny island with a lighthouse on it. Tom is the lighthouse keeper and he and his wife Izzy are the only inhabitants, they stay there for a year and get off it for a couple of weeks before returning. They get a visit from two men on a boat who bring them supplies and any letters once every three months. It takes a special sort of person to be able to cope with such an isolated location.
The action quickly skips back to December 1918 when Tom has got back from the war where he was an officer. Like many others he’s desperate to get a job, he’s glad to be in one piece but he knows that he’ll never be the same again after what he has experienced in the war. The peace and quiet of a remote island is just the sort of work he wants to heal his soul and after a few years there he meets and marries Izzy.
It seems like an idylic existence but Izzy suffers multiple miscarriages/still birth, she longs for a baby so when a small boat containing a dead man and a live baby washes up on the island, Izzy persuades Tom to allow her to keep the baby and pretend it is theirs. Izzy believes the baby’s mother must have been washed overboard so nobody would be missing the baby, it seems like an answer to her prayers but it turns out that it isn’t as simple as that.
This isn’t my usual sort of read but I decided to read it after reading a review on a blog I regularly visit but I can’t find which one it was, as often happens. I enjoyed it although I had to suspend my disbelief at times as how likely is it that a baby will wash up on your island just when you need one!
The blurb on the front says, ‘An extraordinary and heart-rending book about good people, tragic decisions and the beauty found in each of them,’ Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief.
It has recently been made into a film and you can see a trailer for it below.