The Alphabet of Light and Dark
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
Winner of the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award 2002.
And as the waves take her apart, piece by piece, she watches the message of the lighthouse spelling itself out on the surface of the water. Its message is composed in the alphabet of light and dark. Flash, eclipse, flash, eclipse. If we see only the light, we are blinded; only the dark and we will never find our way.
A tiny coin found inside a Cloudy Bay oyster, a postcard of a white-haired child leaning against a beached dinghy and a coconut peeled and carved once upon a time on the Batavian coast. These trinkets, found in a sea chest, and the fragmented memories of her grandfather's tall tales are all Essie Lewis has left of her family history.
After her grandfather's death, Essie returns to Bruny Island, Tasmania and to the lighthouse where her great-great-grandfather kept watch for nearly 40 years. Beneath the lighthouse, she begins to write the stories of her ancestors. But the island is also home to Pete Shelverton, a sculptor who hunts feral cats to make his own peace with the past. And as Essie writes, she finds that Pete is a part of the history she can never escape.
'Absorbing, subtle, impressive writing.' Debra Adelaide
'Wood's writing is sinewy, physical and elemental.' Liam Davison
'Its lyrical probing of several dimensions of Australian/Tasmanian experience make it a fitting recipient for this award. Wood's achievement in her sustained evocation of the bleak Bruny Island landscape and the surrounding seascape is tremendously potent and effective.' Stella Clarke
'The author has that special quality which just jumps off the page. The voice is strong and the sense of place so powerful.' James Bradley
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the remote terrain of Bruny Island off the southern coast of Tasmania, Wood's evocative but static debut novel brings together a pair of troubled would-be lovers as they try to come to terms with their difficult pasts. Essie Lewis, a 30ish oceanographer, returns to the island from Perth to become the lighthouse keeper, a position that has played a prominent role in her family history. As she settles in, she runs into former childhood friend Pete Shelverton, a welder and metal sculptor who has buried himself in the task of ridding the island of feral cats. Wood details Essie's life through a series of diaries and documents from her past that outline the arc of her family; Pete's difficulties with women and socializing in general are less fully drawn. When they do come together, it is brief, awkward and incomplete. The one-note plot and sketchy romance put all of the burden on the island-as-exotic-locale and its history, and on Essie's own past there. The results are often lyrical, but end up less than satisfying.
