the light between two oceans book review

And Tom, an upright, honourable man (almost too noble, it has to be said) faces the first of many moral dilemmas, and makes the first decision to have powerful repercussions. In the immediacy of caring for the infant, her milk comes in. Isabel loses one baby after another, and when – just after another stillbirth – a boat washes up onshore with a body and a living baby, she thinks it’s a miracle sent by God. It’s the 1920s, and on a three-year posting with only occasional contact with boatmen who bring supplies, they are far from medical help and the support of family or friends. He is meticulous in observing these rules, but he lets the marks stay, out of love for his young and impulsive wife. Tom is horrified, because he believes from his experiences on the Western Front that it’s the rules which protect man from barbarism. Yet even in the early days of their relationship Stedman hints at a chasm between them when Isobel, bothered that there are un-named places on the island, has the temerity to inscribe her own names for special sites on the Commonwealth Government’s map, a map that – according to the swathe of regulations governing conduct for lighthouse employees – should remain pristine. Their love story is deftly handled, not too sentimental or slushily romantic, because the plot focus lies elsewhere. Tom’s lucky to find a wife willing to endure the isolation Isabel is lucky to find a man with all his limbs intact. Tom’s lighthouse is modelled on the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, situated on the wild south-westerly point on the mainland where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean. It is no accident that Stedman’s island is thus named: two-faced Janus looks to the future and the past and he is the god of beginnings and transitions.

When in the years after WW1 the decorated war hero Tom Sherbourne tries to come to terms with survivor guilt, he finds solace as a lighthouse-keeper at Janus Island, off the WA coast. Fresco of the Judgment of Solomon (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

The light between two oceans book review