The Lighthouse
Shortlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize.
Translation Prize for English-Language Literature.
Translation Prize for English-Language Literature.
Almost middle-aged and completely alone, Fouth sets off from England bound for Germany, the land of his ancestors. The aim of his journey is twofold: a week-long break filled with plenty of walking, good food and plenty of sleep, which will allow him to escape for a while from the melancholy of his recent separation from his wife. But also an opportunity to repeat the trip he had taken years ago with his father, back when his mother left them.
Almost middle-aged and almost alone, Esther will cross paths with Futh when he stays for the first and last night of his trip at the small hotel she runs with her husband. Two completely different people will become entangled in a series of coincidences centred on a small bottle of perfume in a lighthouse-shaped case.
- Pages: 216
- ISBN: 978-960-9527-92-7
- Publication: 2013
- Categories: Literature, Books, Foreign Literature
Like Woolf, Moore makes extensive use of association to unfold her characters’ pasts through a multitude of small, insignificant details or smells. With raw and sharply descriptive language, she captures all the vulgarity and harshness of their mundane lives, where not a single ray of light penetrates. She explores relationships dominated by anguish, loneliness, a sense of loss and constant abandonment.
– Lila Konomara, oanagnostis.grClosing the book (here, the lighthouse is merely a lighthouse-shaped perfume bottle, which evokes associations and floods the characters with memories), we find ourselves in agreement with the review published in The Guardian: it is a novel that explores grief and loss. It also examines abandonment and the anguish it causes. Ultimately, it is a work without dramatic peaks, yet one that evokes many and varied emotions.
– Filippos Filippou, diastixo.grWhat is most striking about Moore’s fine novella is its simplicity, the understated and calm narrative, which has a slow and evolving pace, culminating in the last 10 pages of the book and leading to an unexpected ending with a thriller-like feel.
– LibrofiloAlison Moore
Alison Moore was born in Manchester in 1971. Her short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories 2011. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize and the Scott Prize for her first collection of short stories. She won first prize in the novella category of The New Writer’s Prose and Poetry Prize. The Lighthouse was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Alison Moore lives near Nottingham with her husband Dan and her son Arthur.
