title: Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper
author:  Peter Hill 
description: In 1973, Glasgow-born Hill impulsively dropped out of art school to train as a lighthouse keeper at a series of remote outposts off Scotland's coast. He was, he recalls, the very image of the teenage baby boomer: longhaired, scruffy, dragging his rock 'n' roll tapes around everywhere. Yet he appears to have enjoyed himself immensely, spending weeks in close quarters with a handful of much older men, listening to their anecdotes and learning how to cook huge meals. The biggest problem with this loose, digressive account is that that's pretty much all they did other than keep the lights on. There are some amusing scenes"one lighthouse crew's obsession with the televised Watergate hearings; a game of Scrabble in which only nautical terms are allowed"but the pace is otherwise slow moving. While that sometimes makes for remarkable character studies, the narrative is burdened by Hill's grandiose faith in the significance of his generational moment. As a result, the memoir reads more like an elegy for his lost youth than one for the lighthouse keepers who would soon be replaced by automated technology. Furthermore, American readers will struggle to make sense of the references to 1970s BBC programming, which serve as hooks to describe nearly everyone Hill meets (the book was published in the U.K. last year). At least it's easy to grasp the Scots dialect; the gruff men who speak it hold much of the tale's vitality. In contrast, Hill's more direct efforts to wax charmingly nostalgic sound too often merely pretentious, like the sort of pompous middle-aged prattle Hill would have fled from if he were still 19.<br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  # Galaxies And Oceans
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## N.R. Walker
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “May the stars forever guide us, and may this lighthouse bring us home.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Blurb
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Seizing his one chance to escape, Ethan Hosking leaves his violent ex-
  boyfriend, leaves his entire life, and walks into the path of a raging
  bushfire. Desperate to start over, a new man named Aubrey Hobbs walks out of
  the fire-ravaged forest, alive and alone. With no ID and no money, nothing but
  his grandfather’s telescope, he goes where the Southern Cross leads him.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Patrick Carney is the resident lighthouse keeper in Hadley Cove, a small town
  on the remote Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. After the
  tragic death of his lover four years ago, he lives a solitary life; just him,
  a tabby cat, the Indian and Southern Oceans, and a whole lot of loneliness.
  He’s content with his life until a stranger shows up in town and turns
  Patrick’s head.
  
  
  * 