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Summary
Summary
Paulette Jiles, the bestselling author of the highly praised novels The Color of Lightning, Stormy Weather, and Enemy Women, pushes into new territory with Lighthouse Island--a captivating and atmospheric story set in the far future--a literary dystopian tale resonant with love and hope.
In the coming centuries the world's population has exploded. The earth is crowded with cities, animals are nearly all extinct, and drought is so widespread that water is rationed. There are no maps, no borders, no numbered years, and no freedom, except for an elite few.
It is a harsh world for an orphan like Nadia Stepan. Growing up, she dreams of a green vacation spot called Lighthouse Island, in a place called the Pacific Northwest.
When an opportunity for escape arises, Nadia embarks on a dangerous and sometimes comic adventure. Along the way she meets a man who changes the course of her life: James Orotov, a mapmaker and demolition expert. Together, they evade arrest and head north toward a place of wild beauty that lies beyond the megapolis--Lighthouse Island.
Author Notes
Paulette Jiles is a poet, memoirist, and novelist, born in 1943, and based in San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of a memoir entitled, Cousins. Her novels include Enemy Woman, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, and News of the World.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Jiles's latest (following The Color of Lighting) is a lyrical take on dystopian fiction set in an arid, borderless future in which a surfeit population has caused the totalitarian government's Agencies to resort to drastic survival measures. "People disappeared but everybody pretended not to notice and stayed neutral and colorless like fabric lampshades." Nadia Stepan, deserted by her family when she was four, leads a lonely existence centered on her fantasies about living on Lighthouse Island, a magical place advertised on TV, promising serenity in a natural setting. A chance encounter leads her to James Orotov, a mysterious man who says he has knowledge of her long-imagined destination and possible safe routes to it. Nadia must learn to trust James while hoping that the technical know-how and connections he claims to possess will be enough to travel safely without arousing the suspicion of the authorities. The dangerous plot James hatches is like that of one of Nadia's beloved classic novels. The real test, however, consists of living without the restrictions that have defined their existences up until now. Jiles's prose is a striking match for the barren landscape of this moody adventure tale. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Darhansoff & Verrill. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A quest novel set in the future, when America has become a vast megalopolis divided into "Gerrymanders" and water is a scarce resource in a new "Drought Age." At the age of 4, Raisa is abandoned by her parents and taken to an orphanage. She officially becomes a PD--a Parentless Dependent--and is given a new name, Nadia Stepan. Although she has an eye condition that temporarily renders her blind, Nadia learns from television (which pervades the culture, along with Big Radio) about Lighthouse Island, a land presented as a Utopian refuge from all that ails the vast city that America has turned into. It's presented as a place of "no buildings, no water rationing, only landforms, and random plants, fossils, silence, solitude, [and] mountains...." We also learn of James Orotov, a paraplegic meteorologist and demolitions expert fascinated by geography, whose maps lead to suspicions of his being guilty of "[c]artographical treason." Nadia eventually grows up and becomes adept at lying as a survival technique, and when Oversupervisor Blanche Warren discovers that she has had an affair with Blanche's husband, Nadia decides to escape by going to Lighthouse Island. Eventually, her path crosses with James', and he explains to her the vastness--and perhaps impossibility--of her undertaking. Nadia and James in due course fall in love and get married--and help each other on the long journey north to Lighthouse Island. When they arrive, they find it's scarcely the Utopia it's cracked up to be. Jiles writes beautifully but paces the novel glacially.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Jiles' dystopian novel, set in an overpopulated world ravaged by drought, follows a young woman on her quest to find her way to an island haven. Orphaned as a child, Nadia Stepan finds refuge in literature after her beloved guardian is arrested. As a young woman, Nadia has little aptitude for the government PR job she's assigned to, and an affair with an Oversupervisor's husband costs her the position and nearly her freedom. Nadia decides to flee to Lighthouse Island, an island in the Pacific Northwest that is rumored to have water and wildlife in abundance. Nadia finds an unlikely ally in James Orotov, a demolitions expert who was crippled in a blast many years before. After a fateful rooftop meeting, James aids Nadia in her flight, using his access to the system to help her avoid detection and arrest until he, too, falls into disfavor and has to flee. An unfortunate style and a world that, at times, feels cartoonishly evil mar Jiles' otherwise compelling odyssey, which picks up considerably once Nadia and James are reunited.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Nadia Stepan, the plucky protagonist of Jiles's latest novel, likes "stories in which the characters' actions and thoughts were described and the plot proceeded with a happy continuity." Luckily Nadia's happens to be just such a story, though its continuity is more challenging than happy as she struggles across the new American Dust Bowl toward a rumored haven on the Pacific. It's 2198, and the cities of the Midwest have lost their names, merged into one continuous "megapolis." Aquifers have been pumped out, rain is rare, and water is scarce everywhere. Government agencies that seem to be modeled on old Soviet bureaucracies control rationing, housing, jobs and the news. Executions are broadcast live to distract the country's citizens, who "are all prisoners of thirst." Abandoned as a young girl by her parents, left alone with books in adolescence, Nadia learns about better times by reading old novels. Broke, rebellious and desperate by the time she reaches her 20s, she sets out on foot to a seaside retreat for the wealthy that's been advertised on television. To help her along, Jiles provides a sidekick in a wheelchair - a student of old maps, who becomes Nadia's guide for adventures that recall those of Steinbeck's Joads, with troubles reminiscent of the Old Testament's Job. Although the novel's "Drought Age" sounds a serious Ancient Mariner warning, "Lighthouse Island" initially engages readers as a literary lark, with Nadia taking turns playing Alice exploring dry land, Huck lying his way out of tight spots and Isabel Archer searching for the fiction-based ideal. When life becomes too oppressive, Nadia listens to readings from classic authors on an anachronistic "Big Radio." Yet all her walking and hitchhiking can be slow going, and about halfway to the Great Northwest her predicaments become predictable, her ever-ready cleverness implausible. Jiles's inventive futurism and rollicking wit gradually flag as the plot plods along to an ending that gives Nadia the "happy continuity" the author has reserved for her all along.
Library Journal Review
Nadia Stepan grows up an orphan in a far future in which population explosions coupled with extreme drought have led to a world of class extremes, an endless city, and water rationing. To maintain calm among an increasingly desperate populace, calendar dates, street names, and all the identifiers of time and place have been abandoned and television dramas are the preferred entertainment. Nadia, always an outsider, reads instead of watches TV, and when a rival sets her up to be captured in a population sweep, she evades arrest to leave the megalopolis and walk to Lighthouse Island, a utopian dream. Verdict With the lack of quotation marks to denote speech, the style becomes part of the dystopia, as if even basic grammar has devolved. The barrier between thoughts and spoken word is broken without those grammatical queues, making the text dreamlike. Nadia's wandering journey maintains that hopeful anticipation of deep sleep. This is not a fast read, but if readers take the time, Jiles (Color of Lightening; Stormy Weather) has created a fascinating dystopic vision of a future world. [See Prepub Alert, 4/22/13.]-Jennifer Beach, Cumberland Cty. P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.