Until now, a child is the only thing missing in Tom and Isabel’s life, a huge source of sadness and loss to her. A boat washes up on shore, its cargo a dead man and a crying baby. The Light Between Oceans has an arresting opening. The gaps between visits back to shore are measured in years. She willingly leaves her parents and home in the small port of Partageuse to join him in blissful isolation on the island, their only contact with the mainland a delivery of supplies by boat every three months. Falling in love with his young wife Isabel on his return home has brought him happiness he never imagined possible. Tom Sherbourne has survived the First World War physically unscathed and is working as the keeper of a lighthouse on Janus Rock, a tiny remote island off the coast of Western Australia at the meeting point of the two oceans of the title (Indian and Great Southern). I’ve heard it said many times that however tough the climate, the best novels always rise to the top and the fact that this one was snapped up is proof of that.Įvery novel needs a ‘hook,’ an enticing and ideally unique premise that can be summed up in a few words, and the author was onto a winner with this one. There has never been a worse time to try to get a novel traditionally published, but M L Stedman’s debut was sold at a 9-way publisher auction in the UK and the international rights in 17 territories. (See Being Selective – How do you choose which books to read?) It’s free, it can’t be manipulated and there’s always something behind it. That’s just me multiply that by all the people who already love it two weeks after publication and you have PR gold dust nothing works like word of mouth. I’ve just told a group of friends about this book, one of at least ten conversations since I finished it last week. As I mentioned in a recent post Book Titles – (Don’t) Call It What You Like, I wanted to read The Light Between Oceans from the moment I heard the title: it is original, it conveys the theme and gives a real taste of the beauty and emotion of the story inside the (equally beautiful) cover. Sometimes you just get a feeling about a book.
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