Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette WintersonHarcourt, 2004 (originally Fourth Estate, 2004)

A book full of wind and sea and salt. Silver, an orphan, is apprenticed to a lighthousekeeper to learn the trade, but of course, this being Jeanette Winterson, that’s only one of this book’s many stories. (There are always many stories, stories to hear and stories to tell.) There’s the story of Babel Dark, or rather, the stories of Babel Dark, a mysterious minister who lived in Silver’s town in the 1800s, and there’s Silver’s story, or rather, Silver’s stories, and there’s love, of course, and connection and literature and solidity and flight (rocks and wings). I appreciated this book more upon re-reading it, the cadences and phrases of it: it’s gorgeous.