Anthony O’Neill – Lamplighter

I picked up this book after enjoying a newer novel by Anthony O’Neill: The Dark Side, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Somehow I “get” his characters, they feel real and flawed in realistic ways. So I looked up what else he wrote and stumbled upon The Lamplighter. Since it’s set a) in Edinburgh and b) in the Victorian age I had to read it.

Blurb An atmospheric thriller set in nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Anthony O’Neill’s elegant, darkly masterful novel is full of psychological suspense and first-rate horror. Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are forbidden by the institute’s governor, who warns Evelyn to cease her nocturnal storytelling. Evelyn defies him — and is cast out of the orphanage and sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father. Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting lodge? Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical law turns up on one of Edinburgh’s finest streets; the grave of a famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered while dashing for a train; and a retired lighthouse keeper is ripped to shreds while walking his dog — all this after Evelyn, now a young woman, has reappeared in the city. What connects the victims? And what of Evelyn, anguished and appealing, who repeatedly claims to have dreamed the murders in great detail — each time blaming a mysterious “lamplighter”? Leading the official investigation is Carus Groves, a conceited yet effective police inspector desperate to cap his unremarkable career with a sensational case. Heading up the unofficial investigation is a disillusioned professor of logic and metaphysics, Thomas McKnight, and his assistant, Joseph Canavan, a strapping young gravedigger. Using reason, intuition, philosophy, and luck, these men race to solve the murders and unveil the source of Evelyn’s torment, and in so doing penetrate the very gates of Hell.

Opinion The writing is different that in the Dark Side, because it seems adapted to the time in which the novel is set. There are many! words I haven’t encountered yet, because I’m not a native english speaker and also O’Neil seems to have used quite a lot of “old timey” and Scottland specific language. But using my eReaders dictionary that was no problem and I actually enjoyed learning new stuff (although I suspect I won’t be remembering much of it). The novel feels like a bunch of loose threads getting woven together and then totally change direction. There’s a sense of mystery and wonder to the way he tells the story. And I was often on the verge of being pulled in, into pre-enlightenment superstitions for the sake of the book, as well as doubting if that really was, where the story was going and expecting a scientific twist.
The characters although not described in much detail, feel realistic and three-dimensional. Looking back there was a good mix between the thoughts of the characters and their actions, that made them palpable.
There are quite a few philosophic discussions in the book, dealing with the difference between medieval and enlightenment times, woven in between the crime story that takes one to many different places. Having been to Edinburgh certainly helped with my imagination, knowing which streets the characters, and especially Evelyn wandered.

There is no romance (which I was happy about), there’s only one female character and three main male characters and one female sidecharacter, but it works, especially in that time. I didn’t find it especially horrific or horrific at all, being honest, so I would not categorise it as a thriller. It’s a very special crime story somehow, in my opinion.

Quotes There are soooo many good quotes, but most of them hint at some things that happen or are in the twists themselves, so I just selected a few that I hope won’t spoil anything.

It was a terrible and exquisite thing, to have a heart that was not a muscle but a wound.

Such men, riven with self-doubt, were of course vulnerable to fantastic theories and fabulous missions, and equally at risk of driving deeper into self-destruction.

Blood is like French perfume to the Edinburgh hussy, Carus.

Have you ever stopped to consider how much time even the most unimaginative man each day spends, neither willingly nor unwillingly, in the world of his imagination?

It could well be the case that the last thing a man sees is not that which his eyes settle upon, but that which his imagination furnishes for him. It could be argued quite reasonably, in any case, that this imagination is what really constitutes a man’s soul.

We consciously impose limits on our own thoughts and settle into an expedient system of simplifications and archetypes. We willingly stamp archetypes even upon ourselves, to fall into the world we have constructed out of easy recognitions and the disinclination for complexity. The unconscious, however, remains unsated and frequently rebellious.

“And of the orphanage? What do you think of when I mention it now?”
She considered. “I think of a parcel tightly bound.”
“A parcel? Not a cage?”
“Cages,” Evelyn said, “have air.”