Angela Carter
Like Water for Chocolate
Laura Esquivel
Landing Light
Don Paterson
Ground Water
Matthew Hollis
VISIT…
* * *
Cape Wrath
The location of Silver’s lighthouse is the most northwesterly part of the British mainland. It can be reached by ferry and minibus. The website, www.capewrath.org.uk, has lots of pictures, local and lighthouse information.
The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses
Kinnaird Head, Stevenson Road, Fraserburgh, AB43 9DU, www.lighthousemuseum.co.uk
Kinnaird Head, the first lighthouse built on top of a fortified castle, is now the home of this museum and it has been kept as it was when the last lighthousekeeper left.
SURF…
* * *
www.jeanettewinterson.com
A comprehensive site, produced by the author, with information on each book as well as her other writings. Also includes reading suggestions and a bookshop.
www.nlb.org.uk/ourlights/history/ capewrath.htm
The Northern Lighthouses Board’s website has lots of historical and practical information, including a page on each of the lighthouses for which it is responsible including this one for Cape Wrath Lighthouse.
www.nts.org.uk
Stay in a Scottish lighthouse. The National Trust for Scotland’s website has links to the various lighthouses and keepers’ cottages available for holiday lets.
LISTEN…
* * *
Tristan und Isolde
Richard Wagner
Acknowledgements
Thank you very much to Caroline Michel and Marcella Edwards and everyone at HarperPress. And to Philippa Brewster, Henri Llewelyn Davies, Rachel Holmes and Zoe Silver.
About the Author
JEANETTE WINTERSON’S first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel. Since then she has published seven other novels, including The Passion, Written on the Body and The PowerBook, a collection of short stories, The World and Other Places, a book of essays, Art Objects, and most recently a children’s picture book, The King of Capri. She has adapted her work for TV, film and stage. Her books are published in 32 countries. She lives in Oxfordshire and London. Visit her website: www.jeanettewinterson.com
For automatic updates on Jeanette Winterson visit harperperennial.co.uk and register for AuthorTracker.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise
‘Winterson’s unique voice can’t be underestimated…the originality of her lyrical gift is breathtaking. Lighthousekeeping is a slim but lovely Winterson classic…You want to savour every salt-decayed description…She is a true innovator of form’
JOANNA BRISCOE, Guardian
‘A brilliant, glittering piece of work, the kind that makes you gasp out loud at the sheer beauty of the language. The key note of Winterson’s prose is pared down elegance, here charged with a luminous, lyrical intensity’
Independent
‘An entrancing, gleaming crystal of a book which left me bereft when it was over…Lighthousekeeping shows Winterson spinning fairy stories with the lightest touch, treating us to a virtuoso display of imaginative fiction’
Independent on Sunday
‘Other novelists have been fascinated by the symbolism of the lighthouse…but few have conjured up its lonely magic so beautifully or with such melancholy grace…The hypnotic, pared-down, allusive style is witty, heartbreaking and charming’
AMANDA CRAIG, The Times
‘Such a delight that it seems almost to take you by surprise. Winterson’s writing is incredibly spare to the point of poetry: there is not a superfluous word here, which makes for that all too rare a gift – writing you want to savour, remember, even memorise…Winterson has an unusual winning combination of slow, languid, descriptive language and a suspense-filled plot which speed you through this gem, perfect for curling up with on dark, lonely nights’
Daily Express
‘A marvellously skilful juggling act of ideas and emotion…Winterson’s prodigious talent brings the book alive’
JUSTINE PICARDIE, Evening Standard
‘There is something rare and rather beautiful about Jeanette Winterson’s writing. Never needlessly embellished, often darkly droll, it is spare but rich; timeless yet fresh’
Time Out
‘Delicious…a beguiling mix of fairy tale and steely emotional truths…Lovers of kisses, shipwrecks, seahorses and sadness will be entranced’
Elle
‘A sheer delight…The success of Lighthousekeeping lies in its complete disregard for fact in favour of fantasy, and in the seductive richness of its language’
Scotland on Sunday
‘Poetic, funny and fantastical…there is plenty to intrigue, entertain and touch the reader’
Mail on Sunday
‘Rich in language, experimental in form, fierce in its engagement, but it has an elegant simplicity’
Scotsman
‘Structure, content and style all complement each other irresistibly…Lighthousekeeping shows that as a storyteller Winterson still shines tall and true’
Glasgow Herald
‘Assertively written, intricately structured, artful and allusive, thick with Winterson’s characteristic word-play, puns on literal and metaphorical meanings’
TLS
‘Fresh and inventive, with many flashes of brilliance…No one chooses a metaphor as perfectly as Winterson, one of contemporary English literature’s most original voices’
Sunday Tribune
By the same author
FICTION
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
The Passion
Written on the Body
Art and Lies
Gut Symmetries
The World and Other Places (short stories)
The PowerBook
ESSAYS
Art Objects
CHILDREN’S FICTION
The King of Capri
COMIC BOOK
Boating for Beginners
Copyright
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith
London W6 8JB
www.harperperennial.co.uk
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2005
FOURTH EDITION
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2004
Copyright © Jeanette Winterson 2004
PS section © Louise Tucker 2005,
except ‘Endless Possibilities’ by Jeanette Winterson © Jeanette Winterson 2005
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Jeanette Winterson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work
of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
This book is sold s
ubject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com