K M Walker

A Ferocious Debut

The Light Between Oceans drops us in the waters off Western Australia, on a remote outcropping of rock, with an impossible dilemma. If the answer to your deepest longing and most painful loss arrived, unbidden, on your doorstep (or beach), would you take it?

What if taking this unexpected gift would destroy another person you’ve never met, but you could never get caught? What if revealing your secret makes things right, but destroys the person you love most?

M L Stedman’s characters live in the wreckage of World War I, traumatized by cruelty and heartbreak not of their making. They wrestle with their choices and each other in isolation, tending a lighthouse as their home, their duty and their life’s metaphor. The book asks - if we are good people, who have been dealt an unfair lot, are we allowed to right the scales with one very bad decision?

The writing in The Light Between Oceans is ferocious and fresh. It stares you down and knocks you off your feet again and again, but you get back up, begging for more. You root for everyone and no one. The book barrels forward with no clear path for anyone to survive unscathed by their actions or inactions.

It is a remarkable debut for a reclusive author. By all accounts, M L Stedman shuns celebrity, despite her startling talent. (Which is deeply refreshing in our world, where celebrity too often exists devoid of talent.) She might long for her characters’ almost total seclusion. I’m all for it - as long as she sends us back more novels.