The light has gone dark

I read this one because it’s going to be turned into a movie starring two of my Pajiba Ten — Michael Fassbender & Rachel Weisz. Unfortunately, having read the book, there is no way in hell that I’m going to go see the movie.

“You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.”

So, the basic summary of the plot: Tom and Izzy Sherbourne live on the deserted Janus Island, off the coast of Australia, caring for its lighthouse. Newlyweds, they’ve been trying to start a family, but Izzy has suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth. After several years of this, they hear a baby crying somewhere on the shore. A boat has washed up with a dead man and a several months old baby inside. Seeing this as a miracle from God, Izzy convinces her husband to not report the boat, and they care for the baby as if she’s their own. Of course, life cannot go on like this — that baby had a mother somewhere. Her heart has been broken by the disappearance of her daughter and husband, and when Tom finds out about her, he can’t stay away.

This book was so fucking depressing. Izzy’s miscarriages and the stillbirth only scratch the surface — it’s set with the war in the recent past, so there’s a lot of dead men haunting the story along with the living men who suffer from PTSD (Tom included, to a degree). Tom has a terrible backstory. The baby’s mother does, too. It’s just a lot of sad people in a small town, with a little girl trapped in the middle. I won’t deny that the writing was wonderful, and the plot kept me hooked, but I know the movie would leave me even more depressed than the book.