Review by New York Times Review
ANYONE WHO HAS been traumatized by Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" - a high percentage of its viewers, I'd guess - may hesitate to read beyond the early pages of Abby Geni's first novel, "The Lightkeepers." The heroine, a photographer named Miranda, is leaving the island where she has spent the previous year, where the sea gulls now seem to be trying to make sure that no one gets out alive. "A gull slams against Miranda's temple, knocking her off balance. . . . Wings thunder around her shoulders." But readers who persevere beyond this unnerving beginning will find themselves carried along by a sturdy, rather old-fashioned thriller ramped up by some modern, ecologically themed plot twists. The islands on which nature has turned increasingly hostile are the Farallons, off the coast of California, an archipelago so inhospitable ships can't land on its shore. The only way to reach it is by being airlifted inside a net attached to a crane: a contraption resembling the apparatus that transported King Kong from his jungle home to "civilization." Populated by a half-dozen biologists studying its flora and fauna, Southeast Farallón is a hellhole. The weather is appalling. The surrounding ocean is the scene of more shark attacks each year than occur on the rest of the planet combined, a slightly puzzling statistic, given the island's small human population. The granite bedrock is crumbling, and the stream is a toxic "filthy yellow trickle." As if that weren't enough, "Southeast Farallon is the most rodent-dense place in the world." Miranda endures her first serious misadventure when the ground gives way beneath her and, having fallen, she is swarmed by hordes of small, unpleasant mice. Miranda turns out to be something of a graphomaniac, and the narrative is advanced by the long, detailed letters she writes (and never mails) to her mother, who died when she was 14. The plot is structured like that of a horror film, moving from one alarming event to another, and in between, maintaining a tension around the question of how much worse the situation will get. Despite her early mishap, Miranda is enchanted by her "exquisite" new home, if not by her housemates, with whom she has "the dynamic of a family, minus any semblance of warmth." A young researcher named Andrew seems menacing and shady. A few of Andrew's colleagues have unsettling, otherworldly auras. Galen and Forest, the "shark specialists," remind Miranda of an "elderly god of the sea" and a "coldblooded naiad." And Andrew's lover, Lucy, can't resist the compulsion to go diving in a wet suit even though the waters are home to three vicious female white sharks, which the scientists call "the Sisters" after the witches in "Macbeth." When Miranda goes for an outing in a small boat, one of the Sisters threatens to upend the vessel, much like Moby Dick going after the Pequod. In November, the whales arrive in droves, and the ghost said to haunt Miranda's bedroom makes an appearance. Miranda suffers a violent assault, and after she has been in residence for four months, one of her colleagues dies a suspicious death. As the relationships among the humans become more strained, Miranda finds inspiration and comfort in the natural world and shares a moment of communion with a baby seal. GENI, WHOSE FIRST book was a story collection, "The Last Animal," is strongest when she's imparting interesting information about the animals inhabiting the island and the sea creatures swimming off its shores. Too often, though, the writing works no harder than is absolutely necessary in order to tell the story. We realize that the tendency to settle for the cliché instead of striving for a more original locution is the narrator's rather than the author's. But finding, in consecutive paragraphs, Miranda's imperturbable aunt described as "a slab of granite" and a pair of twins characterized as "identical as peas" and "walking mirror images" may mean that we find ourselves reading not for the pleasures of language but more simply out of curiosity about what will happen next. That curiosity is not inconsiderable, and - as we turn the pages of this peculiar, atmospheric novel - we hardly mind that events are growing more improbable, building toward a surprising but somewhat implausible climax. We are likewise willing to overlook the passages of sententiousness that creep into the narrative, such as this one (from which the book takes its title) about the island's history - a time when the workers who operated its lighthouse engaged in a metaphorical battle for the archipelago's soul with the scavengers who came to steal the wild birds' eggs and sell them on the mainland: "There are two kinds of people in the world. There are eggers and lightkeepers. The former are driven by acquisition and avarice. The latter are driven by curiosity and caution. Eggers take what they can, consequences be damned. Lightkeepers take what they need, nothing more. Eggers want to have. Lightkeepers want to be." It's become customary - the fallback consolation of the book reviewer - to say that one is eager to see what a writer will do next. But in fact that is the case here. Ultimately, what engages us in "The Lightkeepers," beyond its energetic plot, is the sense of watching its author discover her ability to construct a suspenseful narrative. And we finish this novel curious to find out what sorts of stories Abby Geni will choose to tell. The island is a hellhole. The weather is appalling. The sea gulls are bullies. FRANCINE PROSE'S most recent novel is "Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Geni follows her distinctive short story collection, The Last Animal (2013), with a first novel of gripping, talon-sharp intensity. Nature photographer Miranda has traveled the world to places of magnificent if harrowing extremes to capture life in its wondrously myriad forms, but nothing has prepared her for the wild glory and malevolence of the Farallon Islands. Not far off the coast of northern California, these small, wind-whipped, rocky outposts surrounded by viciously rough seas seem to exist outside time. Also called the Islands of the Dead and teeming with mice, bats, seabirds, and elephant seals as great sharks and whales patrol nearby, they are off-limits to humans, except for a small group of hardened biologists who barely acknowledge the photographer's presence. Miranda recounts the many dangers she faces, both in nature and among the secretive scientists, in undeliverable letters to her long-dead mother. This poignant epistolary habit in concert with her living life through the camera lens leads to discerning and affecting reflections on loss, aloneness, and the discrepancies between memory, image, and fact. As the plot turns violent and suspenseful, and the mesmerizingly vivid descriptions reach shivery crescendos of shocking revelations, Geni dramatically meshes the grand, menacing power of the ruthless wild with the mysteries and aberrations of the equally untamed human psyche.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The strange and desolate Farallon Islands serve as the backdrop for this evocative and enchanting debut novel. Geni transports us to this jagged, treeless archipelago off the coast of San Francisco to explore a single house, inhabited by five biologists, an intern, and the narrator-a nature photographer named Miranda. Wherever she travels, Miranda writes letters to her dead mother, revealing parts of herself that remain hidden to the rest of the world. While she photographs the elephant seals, whales, sharks, and birds, the looming danger of the ocean and the islands themselves force Miranda to rely on her often elusive housemates. There is Galen, the longest resident, who is a shark specialist; Mick, the amiable whale biologist; Charlene, the young, enthusiastic intern; and Lucy, a private but determined ornithologist. A series of mysterious accidents and injuries augur more surprises during Miranda's tumultuous stay on the islands. Geni (The Last Animal) writes with the clear, calm confidence of a master storyteller. This is a haunting and immersive adventure, set in an unforgettable, wild habitat of its own. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
What truly separates people from the wilderness of the Earth they inhabit? Geni, author of the short story collection The Last Animal (2013), continues to provocatively prod these boundaries in her debut novel. The Farallon Islands are a rocky archipelago 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco. Now a wildlife preserve, they are rich in birds, sharks, whales, and seals. The only humans are biologists who live in a small research cabin. Whether the islands are, in real life, as treacherous, desolate, astonishing, and beautiful as experienced by Miranda, the novel's protagonist, is near impossible to know; they are closed to the public. But Miranda gains access to the cabinand its strange family of quirky researchersas a nature photographer. She is to spend a year capturing the crumbling landscape and copious wildlife of the historically named "Islands of the Dead." A loner by nature, Miranda falls in love with the place, and she stays in love, though she quickly suffers an assault at the hands of one of the biologists. More violence follows, and the question of whether it is wrought by human hands or the island itself hangs over the book like a fog. Miranda's travelogue, at once emotional and dreamy and rendered in crisp, stunning prose, is so central to the book that readers may at times forget the underpinnings of the locked-room mystery or brush off the question of her reliability as a narrator. And yet, at other times, the expository velocity is so unrelenting that the prose could almost get lost in the momentum. But not entirelyGeni may be unmatched in her ability to describe nature in ways that feel both photographically accurate and emotionally resonant. Natural wildness, human unpredictability, and the subtle use of literary devices are woven here into a remarkable, vertiginous web. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
