The Light Between Oceans (December 2016 Meeting)

Author: M.L. Steadman

One-sentence summary: A lighthouse caretaker and his wife decide to keep a lost baby as their own instead of seeking out its mother and that choice dictates the course of the rest of their lives.

B.A.D. Girls Book Rating: 8

Our favorite thing about it: This is a really great story with lots of nuances that cover the gamut of human emotion.

Our least favorite thing about it: This is a really sad story.

Main Topics of Discussion: Parenthood, Infertility, Isolation, Grief, War, Separation

Our favorite quote: “Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting (to forgive and forget). You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.”

Notes: We all really liked this story, despite the fact that it is overwhelmingly sad. It’s a story that dives head first into real human emotions and explores them ruthlessly. We appreciated the perspectives of all the main characters and got caught up in the story itself. Some of us had a hard time getting into the book, but we all loved the theme of forgiveness in the second half. Some other notes:

• Isabelle, while mostly very realistic for a mother experiencing never-ending infertility and infant loss, was sometimes hard to identify for us. On the whole, though, her character was raw, complicated, and mostly well-done.
• It was interesting how a terrible secret between two people could eat away at Tom in the same way that the fertility ate away at Isabelle.
• The setting of the lighthouse was really important to the story because of the isolation. We all agreed that the same story could not and would not have happened on the mainland. It was an interesting, almost alternate-reality setting.
• The characters were really well-rounded. You liked and hated them at different points, but there was no one you could point to as a villain. They were all in impossible situations.
• A side-theme – the effects of war on the soldiers, a country, a community, and those left behind – was also a large factor in the book. Also separation – mostly between mother and child, but also in other ways.

Memorable Meeting Moments: This was our Christmas meeting, so we gave Christmas gifts to each other and played our jeopardy game. We also did our annual Christmas book exchange. This year we decided to start our meeting a few hours early since it was a Sunday, and we all watched White Christmas in Rachel’s newly furnished media room. It was a first time to watch that movie for half of us!

What We Ate: Rachel made her family’s traditional Christmas dinner: curried meat pies served with toppings (banana, peanuts, and chutney), roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts. She made gingerbread cupcakes with cinnamon frosting for dessert. We also had pomegranate and champagne before-dinner drinks along with cheese dip and crackers for an appetizer while we waited for the meat pies to bake.