Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Margaret Elphinstone is the author of eight novels, including The Incomer (1987), A Sparrow's Flight (1989), Islanders (1994), The Sea Road (2000), Hy Brasil (2002), Voyageurs (2003) and Light (2006). She has also had published short stories, poetry and two books on organic gardening. Her next book, And Some There Be, will be published by Canongate in 2009. She lives in Glasgow and teaches at the University of Strathclyde.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,
Moving from landlocked to sea swept Britain, Margaret Elphinstone weaves a sparkling adventure from a few strands of (almost) fact in Light. The hugely inventive Elphinstone takes a fictitious islet off the Isle of Man as the pretext for the 1830s-set yarn that fuses history and fantasy into an exuberantly clever romp, swathed in the mist and spray of northern seas.
- Boyd Tonkin,
Of all the fictional islands in all the world, this one feels the most solidly real.
* The Scotsman *
The prose is crisp... but what stands out is Elphinstone's sense of a strange time and place.
* Times *
'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
May, 1831. On a tiny island off the Isle of Man, the lighthouse is manned by an unusual family. Lucy and Diya are husbandless, with three children between them, and life is already harsh. Now their very livelihood is under threat, for Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson is modernising the nation's lighthouses. When two surveyors arrive to
assess the Ellan Bride light, tension escalates to danger point . . .
'Elphinstone's sense of place, time and atmosphere makes for eerie reading and gives the novel an impressive authenticity . . . breathtaking.'
Scotland on Sunday
'Hugely inventive . . . Exuberantly clever.'
Independent
'A rattling good read.'
Sunday Herald