Product Description

In this sublime reminiscence of the pleasures of solitude, the wonders of the sea, and the odd courses life takes, Peter Hill writes, "In 1973 I worked as a lighthouse keeper on three islands off the west coast of Scotland. Before taking the job I didn't really think through what a lighthouse keeper actually did. I was attracted by the romantic notion of sitting on a rock, writing haikus and dashing off the occasional watercolor. The light itself didn't seem important: it might have been some weird coastal decoration, like candles on a Christmas tree, intended to bring cheer to those living in the more remote parts of the country." Hill learned quickly, though, of the centuries-old mechanics of the lighthouse, of the life-and-death necessity of its luminescence to seafarers, and of the great and unlikely friendships formed out of routine. With his head filled with Hendrix, Kerouac, and the war in Vietnam, Hill shared cups of tea and close quarters with salty lighthouse keepers of an entirely different generation. The stories they told and idiosyncrasies they exhibited came to define a summer Hill has memorialized with great wit and a disarmingly affectionate style.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #715326 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In 1973, Glasgow-born Hill impulsively dropped out of art school to train as a lighthouse keeper at a series of remote outposts off Scotland's coast. He was, he recalls, the very image of the teenage baby boomer: longhaired, scruffy, dragging his rock 'n' roll tapes around everywhere. Yet he appears to have enjoyed himself immensely, spending weeks in close quarters with a handful of much older men, listening to their anecdotes and learning how to cook huge meals. The biggest problem with this loose, digressive account is that that's pretty much all they did other than keep the lights on. There are some amusing scenesâ€"one lighthouse crew's obsession with the televised Watergate hearings; a game of Scrabble in which only nautical terms are allowedâ€"but the pace is otherwise slow moving. While that sometimes makes for remarkable character studies, the narrative is burdened by Hill's grandiose faith in the significance of his generational moment. As a result, the memoir reads more like an elegy for his lost youth than one for the lighthouse keepers who would soon be replaced by automated technology. Furthermore, American readers will struggle to make sense of the references to 1970s BBC programming, which serve as hooks to describe nearly everyone Hill meets (the book was published in the U.K. last year). At least it's easy to grasp the Scots dialect; the gruff men who speak it hold much of the tale's vitality. In contrast, Hill's more direct efforts to wax charmingly nostalgic sound too often merely pretentious, like the sort of pompous middle-aged prattle Hill would have fled from if he were still 19.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
In 1973, Hill, a hippie art student from Glasgow, anticipated that his stint as a summer lighthouse-keeper off the west coast of Scotland would be a time for writing haiku and painting seascapes. Real duty, he learned, is more like living inside a working clock—keeping watch by a relentless schedule, with sleep parcelled into shifts of a few hours and conversations carried on in fifteen-second intervals between foghorn blasts. His narrative gives voice to the old-salt Scotsmen who tend the lights, as they recount murderous legends or boil over while watching the Watergate hearings. Hill's final posting proves the most daunting—a lighthouse on a narrow strip of lava in the Outer Hebrides that is reachable only by helicopter. High seas sometimes submerge the entire island, and Hill's last night there is complicated by the arrival of half a million migrating birds, illuminated by the beacon and pecking at the windows.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist
In 1973, when the author was 19 years old, he took an unusual summer job: relief lighthouse keeper on three islands off the coast of Scotland. "I was attracted," he writes, "to the romantic notion of sitting on a rock, writing haikus and dashing off the occasional watercolour." (He was an art student with a fondness for the writings of Vonnegut and Kerouac and the music of Zappa and Hendrix.) But he didn't expect this little six-month stint to become a life-altering experience. He met a lot of people he never knew existed and discovered that there was a whole subculture surrounding lighthouses, and, in that summer of 1973, he began the shift from childhood to adulthood. Written from a distance of 30 years, Hill's book offers a somewhat wistful memory of a world that has ceased to exist: there are no longer any manned lighthouses in Britain, which means the society of the lighthouse itself is nearing extinction. A charming, entertaining, and thoughtful memoir. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Fabulous!
I've just read this wonderful book and I was sorry that it came to an end. It does exacly what it does on the cover, tell the tale of this young man and his adventures as a lighthouse keeper. There's a lovely build-up to him taking the job, spurred by the inevitable question, how did you get a job like that?
As someone who grew up with a lighthouse outside my living room window (this island, the Bass Rock, gets a couple of mentions!), I have always been fascinated by them. It's a job you never see advertised any more, for in Scotland at least, where this book is set, all the lights are automated.
Peter Hill describes the camararaderie that the men who worked the lights shared so well, which is warms the cockles of your heart. He sprinkles the stories that the older keepers tell him as he's learning the ropes, and we read of both adventurous and mundane lives lead. It's humourous, informative and well-written. Apparently the author is planning a book on Australian lighthouses next, collecting keepers' stories. Can't wait!

Enchanting
A story to savor, from start to finish. Like the other reviewer, one of those all too rare books that you wish would never end.