Review: Keepers of Light – The Age / SMH
Ninety-four-year-old Best Douglas lives in a nursing home, where his doctor, under a recently passed euthanasia law, is trying to have him put down. If the doc had any idea what a long and rich life he was trying to end, perhaps he’d think differently. The reader is thrust headlong into it, with a pivotal event relived, and the lingering, mystical effects of that event introduced. Much of Christopher Salmon’s novel is tied to life on the coast, and the book is drenched in the allure and treachery, the beauty and danger of the sea. It’s Tim Winton-like in that respect. The framing story feels a bit contrived, though. Keepers of Light is worth reading for the likeable characters and richly describes setting, both Australian to the core, rather than as any sort of dramatisation of the euthanasia debate. By Cameron Woodhead
Ar·ca·di·a
A mountainous district in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. In poetic fantasy it represents a pastoral paradise and in Greek mythology it is the home of Pan.
(Oxford)