The Lightkeepers Discussion Guide: Home
Articles, Interviews, and Reviews
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‘The Lightkeepers,’ by Abby GeniThe New York Times, January 29, 2016.
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Review: 'The Lightkeepers' by Abby GeniChicago Tribune, January 6, 2016.
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The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni ReviewKirkus, October 22, 2015.
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Situations of Great Extremity: An Interview with Abby GeniFiction Writers Review, January 14, 2016.
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Abby Geni InterviewKirkus, January 14, 2016.
Other Works by Abby Geni
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The Last Animal by ISBN: 9781619021822
Videos
Discussion Questions
(From litlovers.)
1. Describe Farallon: the weather, animal populations (birds, sharks, and rodents), its stream, even the granite bed rock. In what way does the archipelago itself become a character rather than simply a setting in the novel? Also, consider Farallon's history, as well as how it got its epithet— "Island of the Dead."
2. Follow up to Question #1: If you are familiar with the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds(based on a Daphne du Maurier short story), what are some of the parallels between the film andThe Lightkeepers?
3. How would you describe Miranda? Why, for instance, is the isolation of the Farallon Islands suited to her personality? How does she eventually find her way out of her seclusion? In other words, how does she change by the novel's end?
4. Talk about the letters Miranda writes to her mother. What purpose do they serve in the story, and what do they reveal about Miranda (both the fact that she writes them and the content of the letters themselves)?
5. Miranda's relationship with her fellow housemates has "the dynamic of a family, minus any semblance of warmth." How would you describe the various characters in that "family"—Andrew and Lucy, Galen, Mick, Forest, and Charlene—and their relationships with one another?
6. Miranda finds comfort, even relief, from the others in the natural world of Farallon. What are some of the connections she makes with creatures. How does she come to view the biologists and their relationship to nature? What effect do their studies have on island life?
7. Were you surprised by the novel's climax? Do you find it somewhat implausible? If so, does it detract from your enjoyment of the novel?
8. What is the derivation of the book's title—The Lightkeepers. Who, in the novel, are the eggers and who are the lightkeepers?
9. Is there an underlying message within the book? What major issues are raised?
10. Bonus question: For Shakespeare lovers: Miranda's name?
Reserve a copy
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The Lightkeepers by ISBN: 9781619026001
Suggestions for further reading
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A Place of Hiding by ISBN: 9780553801309An isolated beach on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel is the scene of the murder of Guy Brouard, one of Guernsey’s wealthiest inhabitants and its main benefactor. Forced as a child to flee the Nazis in Paris, Brouard was engaged in his latest project when he died: a museum in honor of those who resisted the German occupation of the island during World War II. It is from this period of time that his murderer may well have come. But there are others on Guernsey with reason to want Guy Brouard dead... -
Refuge by ISBN: 9780679740247In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic. -
The Song of the Dodo by ISBN: 9780684800837Thirty years ago, two young biologists named Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson triggered a far-reaching scientific revolution. In a book titled The Theory of Island Biogeography, they presented a new view of a little-understood matter: the geographical patterns in which animal and plant species occur. Why do marsupials exist in Australia and South America, but not in Africa? Why do tigers exist in Asia, but not in New Guinea? Influenced by MacArthur and Wilson's book, an entire generation of ecologists has recognized that island biogeography - the study of the distribution of species on islands and islandlike patches of landscape - yields important insights into the origin and extinction of species everywhere.
