The Light Between the Oceans

Four of us met at Jan's house on Thursday May 17th to discuss The Light Between the Oceans by M L Stedman.  Jane and Sally were not able to be with us.

We all enjoyed reading this book. It is a tragic story about good people and the fateful decisions that they made.  They broke the rules to follow their hearts.  It is about the love and happiness that Tom and Isabel found in their decisions but in the end this interval was short-lived. 

The arrival of a boat at the isolated island inhabited by lighthouse-keeper Tom and his wife Isabel,  and this boat carrying a baby in the arms of her dead father, prompts the recently bereaved Isabel, mother of a stillborn child, and Tom to rescue the baby and, against Tom's better judgement, they claim her as her own.  The descent into deceipt was slow until they reached a point where they were trapped by their decision to keep the child.

It is a story about right and wrong and the fine line that sometimes separates these values.  It is a story for which there can never be a 'good' and tidy outcome for the characters involved.  We debated the rights and wrongs of what Isabel and Tom did, that after the trauma of miscarriages and stillbirth Tom wanted to make it right for Isabel, but in Stedman's writing you are aware of his misgivings right at the outset.   Stedman's writing cleverly seduces the reader into accommodating Isabel's decision to keep this "gift from God." But in the end where there is justice for one person it is another's tragic loss.
   

Jan pointed out that M L Stedman, originally from Western Australia, has now lived for many years in London, where she worked as a lawyer before embarking on creative writing.  She wondered if this accounted for Stedman having so ably written a narrative which effectively placed the reader in the position of seeing both sides of the matter, the case for and against in relation to the self-adoptive parents and to the biological mother.  Legal people are trained to be able to defend and prosecute. 

In the end what most people would see as natural justice prevailed.  But the cost was very high.  In our discussion it was suggested that the ending was rather weak.  And that the timing of the death of Isabel somewhat melodramatic.  This did not detract, however, from us all feeling this was a gripping story well told and although we did not remember to vote at our meeting my sense is that we would all give it 4 or 5 stars.

The next meeting takes place at Jane's on June 14th when we will discuss 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez