The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex

 

Stonex’s The Lamplighters is at once a compelling mystery and a tale of love, loss, grief and what it means to be the one left behind. Based on a true story about three lighthouse keepers disappearing from a lighthouse miles out at sea, Stonex reimagines these events and transposes them to Cornwall in 1972. Three men: one older authoritative man in charge, one still being made to feel inexperienced, and one fairly new to the game. They live out on Maiden Rock for weeks at a time, with no one else for company apart from the sea and the sky. When the relief boat comes to pick up Bill and take him home, they are shocked to discover all three men have vanished. The clocks have stopped at 8.45. And the oddest thing? The front door is closed and locked from the inside.

There are two narratives in this novel, one set in 1972 and one set twenty years later, which wind around each other and uncover memories about each other until the idea of time as linear begins to flicker and shimmer rather like the strange lights that the men see on the sea. In 1992, a writer appears and starts contacting the people involved in the mystery, the wives and girlfriends and relatives who were left behind. He wants to uncover the mystery himself, make a novel out of it. At first, the women are sceptical, but soon they begin to talk: Helen, Jenny, Michelle. As the novel progresses, we uncover the secrets that these women were keeping, and understand fully the complete futility of it all.

Although the narrative jumps from one timeframe to another relatively often, I did not find confusing; rather, it reminded me of Stoker’s Dracula in how a narrative can be constructed from multiple sources across multiple eras. And much like Dracula, this novel also contains multiple supernatural elements. For me, these were actually the parts that did not work quite so well in The Lamplighters. Although they were important in creating an atmosphere of mystery and suspense, I found myself wondering how some of the supernatural touches added anything to the plot or narrative. Not to give any spoilers, but there were some things that the men had seen or had contact with that I thought would be crucial to the plot, but in the end did not come to anything after all. Perhaps this is the point that Stonex is making though; we look for mystery in the other, in the supernatural, but maybe the biggest mysteries of all are found in the actions of humanity.

Four stars!