Review of 'The Light Between Oceans' by M.L. Stedman: Vintage, $32.95 pb, 380 pp, 9781742755700

Abstract

M.L. Stedman's first novel was the subject of spirited bidding from several publishers when her agent put it up for auction in 2011. Stedman lives in London, where she has contributed to literary journals, but she is originally from Western Australia, where this book is set. Her three-part novel tells the story of Tom Sherbourne, a returned World War I digger who not only carries the guilt of survival but who is also estranged from his father and brother. They had expelled his beloved mother from the family home after she was caught in a dalliance inadvertently revealed by Tom. In Point Partageuse (Augusta, I suspect), on his way to operate the lighthouse on Janus (yes, the name's significant) Rock, he meets the considerably younger Isabel Graysmark, daughter of the local schoolmaster. Her older brothers have both been killed in the war, leaving her the only child of grief-stricken parents. Alone on Janus Rock, far out where the Great Southern and Indian Oceans meet, Tom receives correspondence from Isabel that eventually leads to marriage. Isabel then joins him on the island. Over the years she suffers three miscarriages, the last just a few days before a boat containing a baby and a dead man washes up on Janus Rock. Isabel convinces Tom that they should keep the baby and raise it as their own. Whatever could go wrong? With so much guilt and grief at play, almost everything. Yet, despite the Gothic plot line, an overdose of metaphor ('a single fat cloud snailed'), unnecessary changes of tense between sections, and a very inconsistent, perhaps non-existent, narrative point of view, the final section of the novel maintains an emotional power that lifts it well above its other weaknesses, and that was no doubt the reason why publishers were keen to get their hands on it.