' Lighthousekeeping, her eighth novel, is a flawed return to form: a slim but lovely Winterson classic that briefly unravels, shoots into the ether, and then remembers, just in time, what it's all about.

There are flashes of potential brilliance here and there, and her confidence in her idiom is impressive, but Lighthousekeeping is unlikely to win over the swelling ranks of doubters.' - Christopher Tayler, Daily Telegraph

'Although the novel's highly mannered idiom works better on the page than it does in summary, it's still pretty irritating, and Winterson's self-consciously intricate borrowings seem too heavy-handedly aimed at the smoky laboratories of English Lit.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author (Apr.Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. But I have difficulty with that method.' Agent, Suzanne Gluck at William Morris. Some of Winterson's off-kilter reflections on love and storytelling are striking, but too many have become convenient truisms: 'A beginning, a middle and an end is the proper way to tell a story. While Dark's hubris is duly gothic, and the fondness between Silver and Pew touching, the narrative overall feels weightless, without cohesion or fixed purpose. Winterson attempts several stories within stories, switching narrators frequently, and relies heavily on the metaphor of storytelling as elucidation.

When Silver grows up, Pew is discharged from his lighthouse duties in the name of progress, and trusty Silver sets off to look for him, ending up in Capri obsessed with a talking bird.

When her mother is blown away-literally possible on the savage Atlantic coast of Salts, Scotland-young Silver is sent to live with the lighthouse keeper at Cape Wrath, kind blind old Pew, who spins yarns, especially one about an early minister of Salts, Babel Dark, a Jekyll-and-Hyde type who's acquainted with contemporaries Darwin and Robert Louis Stevenson, and who cruelly betrays the woman he loves twice. , but here an orphan's romantic memories of growing up in a Scottish lighthouse are stretched to the limit with coy aphorisms. It's hard to believe that Winterson's latest novel is even more lightweight than her previous one, The PowerBook A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred review. A starred review indicates a book of outstanding quality.

Lighthousekeeping by jeanette winterson