The wives who should’ve have bonded together over this incident are estranged and only one is talking. The personification of the sea and the lighthouse is sensationally authoritative and compelling, with the corporeal imagery, mesmerising in its detail, transposing the written word into a movie. The ocean’s changing temperament, reflective of the human mind and soul, depicts the all-powerful injurious Poseidon; it's paradoxical, melancholic, dramatic beauty at variance with its malevolence. Correspondingly, the ‘Maiden’ with its alluring magnetism is transformed into a 20th century ‘Siren’ of the sea. Do its circular walls represent a cocoon or a writhing python intent on devouring its prey? Inspired by a real-life unsolved mystery where the keepers of a working lighthouse went missing in the early 1900s.

As a debut novelist, I wondered if I could ask you to recommend to our readers a few debut novels you have enjoyed recently?Character oriented, this is an atmospheric undertaking, a slow, quiet mystery. For me it was an immersive read. A real story of missing keepers from the 1900s in Scotland from the Flannan Island lighthouse was the impetus for this story. Bill was struggling with his marriage and felt that he needed to get away from his wife. Vince had been struggling with his identity and felt that he needed to start a new life as a woman.

Obviously the main plot thread is the question of what happened to the 3 men, but Stonex does a good job exploring the many inner workings of the character's lives - diving into themes about family, the past, guilt and truth. So on the one hand while I said the story's main plot was obvious it actually kinda isn't, in many ways this book as about everything except the exact reason the men disappeared. Inspired by a haunting true story, a gorgeous and atmospheric novel about the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from a remote tower miles from the Cornish coast–and about the wives who were left behind.While there are a couple of nail-biting and tense moments, I would say overall the story is more of a character study than a thriller, I see some other reviewers deducted points for this not being a more classic story structure. So, if you are looking for a Supernatural story, based on the first paragraph, as I was-you will need to LOOK elsewhere-this is NOT that kind of book. The resolution of the mystery was a little drawn out but when it arrived it provided a satisfactory explanation, although I felt a sense of injustice for Arthur. Maybe if I was married to Jenny I would have also have been driven to creative options for escape although potentially less drastic!