Lights On The Sea
By: Miguel Reina / Translated By: Catherine E. Nelson / Narrated By: Malcolm Hillgartner
Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
At times simple; at other times? Simply beautiful
I really wish that I could listen to a differently translated version of Lights on the Sea because I have a feeling Miguel Reina’s prose reads like one long poem. It is, quite simply, a story that’s an extended metaphor.
A man and a woman, long past their prime, live each day grieving the loss of their young son. One night, a savage storm hits, and their house on a cliff is swept out to sea, leaving them alone and adrift. They have memories; they struggle to survive. And always, they grieve.
Along the way, there’s the passing of seasons, the beauty of lights in the deep and dark night sky. There’s the joy of electricity, the wonder of a dolphin who saves and dances.
The translation hands us beautiful images with really simple language, and that’s what has me wondering if what Reina wrote wasn’t a bit more intense, a bit more delightfully convoluted. Still, it was a lovely, little listen, hampered only at the end where the metaphor that’s been brilliantly unfolding is explicitly explained. I didn’t need that; the story would have been better if the listener could feel the truth in the heart and soul, not have it delivered in one big dose to the brain.
And I usually love Malcolm Hillgarten as a narrator, but his female voices are a tad lispy, a bit over the top. But he does deliver strong emotion well, and Lights on the Sea is filled with plenty of emotion, however repressed it is.
By the way, if you listen to it (and if you’re an Amazon Kindle Unlimited member, you can read and listen to it for free!), let me know what you think of the ending. It’s a bit fuzzy, and I’m not sure I quite know what really happened.
Which always makes for a delightful conversation! Last time I had questions about the end of a story, my sister and I had totally different takes on it, and my mind wound up being blown! This book is sweet, bitter, touching, funny. You feel the isolation of broken hearts, broken lives, all slowly moving in a sometimes desperately churning sea.
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