The Mystery of Flannan Isle is a poem that has always unsettled me. The idea of three men disappearing from a locked lighthouse, a table laid for an uneaten meal and two stopped clocks is unnerving. The remoteness of the lighthouse setting and the effect of such enforced loneliness seems the perfect make-up for something tragic. The knowledge that what happened might never be known means the story is ripe for imagining.
In The LampLighters Emma Stonex takes the bare bones of this story, transposes them to a remote Cornish setting and goes to town in allowing us to consider what might have taken place.
The mystery is definitely one you want answered, but (rather surprisingly) I’m not at all disappointed by the ambiguity of the ending. A myriad of possibilities are offered, all plausible, and it seems fitting that we remain unsure right to the end.
Stonex splits the narrative between the view of the keepers and their partners. We are given an insight into their lives before this unexplained tragedy and the effect of such an experience on those left behind. We learn the minutiae of life in such a remote setting, and the routines that are adopted to make such a life bearable. Along the way we also learn some less palatable truths about each of those involved in this story.
I end the story no closer to knowing what happened, but I found myself caught up in its telling. Thanks to NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication.