Wild Dark Shore

The summary (no spoilers)

A widower and his three children are the caretakers of a lighthouse on a remote research island. A woman washes up on their beach in search of her researcher husband, who is apparently absent. We slowly discover all the tragedy this island is capable of, as well as the life it can give.

Touchstones

There are two major themes among the excerpts in this book that spoke to me. One is the feeling of a parent towards their children, and the continuous balancing act of holding them close while letting them go.

I am trying to allow her to grow while simultaneously keeping her from drifting away. I want her to know life, its beauties and its complexities, I want her to take risks and make mistakes and know love as we all should, and yet those things feel too big… I think that I have been holding them hostage. So we will leave this place and I will let them go, I will let them become… And for the first time I realize that this will not lessen the profundity or fervency of how I love them.

The other theme is that life is tragic, and it is also beautiful, and we must hold those truths together.

You think there will be time, but there isn’t… The world is dangerous and we will not survive it… But here is the nature of life: that we must love things with our whole selves, knowing they will die… There is such peril in loving things at all, and he feels sort of proud, in fact, that he just keeps on doing it.

My Review

I have seen this book on multiple favorite lists, and I waited many weeks for it to be available through the library. I knew little to nothing about the story going in, but it lived up to the hype. It is not a light read. The story holds weight, complexity, mystery, and darkness. But it is well-told. I give Wild Dark Shore 5 stars.