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M.L. Stedman Books

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“And the stars: the sky gets crowded at night, and it is a bit like watching a clock, seeing the constellations slide across the sky. It’s comforting to know that they’ll show up, however bad the day has been, however crook things get. That used to help in France. It put things into perspective—the stars had been around since before there were people. They just kept shining, no matter what was going on. I think of the light here like that, like a splinter of a star that’s fallen to earth: it just shines, no matter what is happening. Summer, winter, storm, fine weather. People can rely on it.”

StarsLife PhilosophyConstancy
Book:The Light Between Oceans
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“Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.”

LossGriefFamilyParentsParenthoodSisterSiblingsBrothers
Book:The Light Between Oceans
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“Tom thought back to the imposing, empty house: to the silence that deadened every room with a subtly different pitch; to the kitchen smelling of carbolic, kept spotless by a long line of housekeepers. He remembered that dreaded smell of Lux flakes, and his distress as he saw the handkerchief, washed and starched by Mrs Someone-or-other, who had discovered it in the pocket of his shorts and laundered it as a matter of course, obliterating his mother’s smell. He had searched the house for some corner, some cupboard which could bring back that blurry sweetness of her. But even in what had been her bedroom, there was only polish, and mothballs, as though her ghost had finally been exorcised.”

DeathLossMourningThe Light Between Oceans
Book:The Light Between Oceans
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“The town draws a veil over certain events. This is a small community where everyone knows that sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember. Children can grow up having no knowledge of the indiscretion of their father in his youth or the illegitimate sibling who lives fifty miles away and bears another man’s name. History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent. That’s how life goes on; protected by the silence that anaesthetises shame.”

Small TownsThe Nature Of History
Book:The Light Between Oceans
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“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory. Isabel is part of him, wherever she is, just like the war and the light and the ocean. Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone. He watches the ocean surrender to the night, knowing that the light will reappear.”

End Of LifeLife Goes OnLife S StoryPeace At The End Of Life
Book:The Light Between Oceans
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