The Light Between Oceans [Kindle Edition]

The Light Between Oceans is a post WW1 Australian set novel about Tom Sherbourne who having been demobbed gets a job as a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock. Soon after he marries and he and his wife come to love their isolated idyll. Their paradise becomes tainted by their inability to have children and following her third miscarriage Isabel is cracking under the strain of the grief, when one night a boat is shipwrecked on their shores..... it contains a dead man and a newborn baby. Believing God has answered their prayers Isabel persuades Tom not to report the wreck and they pass the child off as their own.

But though he loves the child, the actions wrack Tom with guilt for years to come.....

This novel is a stunning debut on the part of M.L Steadman and covers such a range of emotions and reactions. Guilt, grief, sacrifice, morality, love, marriage, parenthood, loss, time, change, duty, truth. Above all it is achingly human, and provokes the same dilemma in its reader as in its protagonist.

I am quite a cynic these days, and on top of that a well read one, so it isn't that often these days that I find a novel with the capacity to move me to tears, but this novel did. Its location is atmospheric and beautifully drawn, the sea and the windswept isolation of the island; even with the unusual parameters of the storyline the novel feels gutwrenchingly real, of a place and time and characters who existed as opposed to an entirely fictitious prospect.

Enormously moving and brilliantly told. I won't forget this book in a hurry nor the emotions that rose within me as I read it. A quality piece of writing and a quality novel, I hugely recommend you purchase this book. 10/10

I ordered this book based on the reviews on Amazon and wasn't disappointed. The plot is fascinating; the dilemma when the boat with a baby and a dead man is found. The reader knows instinctively what will happen but we don't have a clue what will be the outcome of the decision. This is a love story, a mystery and is just so poignant throughout. the story stays with you for some time after you've read it. It is beautifully written and a good piece of literature. Highly recommended.

The first third of this book is captivating, stunning description, great characterisation, compelling story problem. And Stedman nailed her plot effectively, no holes in it at all but...

Then the writing seems to get worse but I think the thing that really pulled me away from the story was the constant chopping about into different characters heads. Even minor characters get their say and there was a loooong section in the middle that went on and on.

A few main characters were under developed, Hannah, Frank.

I don't know. It's an emotive issue which is why so many have responded the way they have but the writing and structure fell off a cliff really. I kept going to the end but no longer cared.

Stedman is a good writer though and I imagine her next book will be better.

'He's in a place where there's just wind and waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning, always looking over its shoulder.'

Tom Sherbourne is haunted by traumatic memories of his horrific experiences in World War I. He is one of the men who have returned to Australia, as so many did not. He is not physically scarred, 'but he's scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then.' Now, looking to his future, he becomes a lighthouse keeper. He takes a position on remote Janus Rock, off the coast of South-Western Australia, with Point Partageuse being the nearest community on the mainland. Partageuse is a place where everyone knows everyone else, and where, after the war, 'gradually, once again lives wove together into a practical sort of fabric..', where '..Janus Rock, linked only by the store boat four times a year, dangled off the edge of the cloth like a loose button that might easily plummet to Antarctica.'

He meets local girl Isabel Graysmark whilst he is on the mainland, they correspond with each other when Tom returns to the lighthouse, and they fall in love and marry. For Isabel, the war has instilled a sense of urgency into life: 'If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted...life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back.' Moving forward in time to the mid 1920s, we meet them living out on Janus Rock together, with a sadness hanging between them that they have no children, Isabel having suffered miscarriages. When a boat is washed up on the rock, they make a decision that day which will change the rest of their lives, as the couple is torn between love and desperate need, and the truth and reality of their situation.

There are some beautiful descriptions of the places, which made me want to visit the fictional Partageuse. Equally, the remote location of the lighthouse, the effects of the weather, the detail of the daily duties Tom carries out, is all conveyed well, and very convincingly, so that the reader can imagine the routine of their days, sense the isolation of the lighthouse keeper and his wife, and feel the remoteness of life on Janus Rock. The effects of the War on the community in Partageuse are movingly described, reminding us of the involvement of Australia in that conflict.

This is stunning prose and heart-wrenching storytelling for a debut writer. Through the story, the author delivers many truths about life. She highlights the best and worst sides of humans, the amount of courage, the strength of love, the severity of intense pain, the cruelty inflicted by a decision made out of Isabel's desperate longing, the remorse felt. A lovely read, it is also heartbreaking as the story unfolds and the repercussions play out. I was willing all the characters to the 'best' outcome for all of them, somehow. This story really touched me, I felt quite deeply affected by it, and I cried at the end. I loved this book. It's a great debut novel. Read more ›

Robustly old-fashioned storytelling, big-hearted and self-assured. When Tom and Izzy Sherbourne recover a marooned boat on the remote Australian coastline in 1926, they are astonished to find a baby within. They swiftly adopt the child as their own, but its history is far more tangled than they could have imagined, and soon the Sherbournes' world collides with that of 'their' baby's family.

I would dock it points for its unattractive jacket, but otherwise The Light Between Oceans is a triumph - really spellbinding fiction. The moral dilemmas are accessible and almost unbearably poignant, the period detail is spot-on, and the Sherbournes themselves make for heartbreaking heroes. It's a swift read, too, brimming with suspense and suffused with longing.