Lights on the Sea

By: Miquel Reina, Catherine E. Nelson - translator

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

In this riveting debut, prize-winning artist and filmmaker Miquel Reina maps out ambitious and fantastical new territory in a novel about a couple holding on for dear life as their world takes an extraordinary fall…

On the highest point of an island, in a house clinging to the edge of a cliff, live Mary Rose and Harold Grapes, a retired couple still mourning the death of their son thirty-five years before. Weighed down by decades of grief and memories, the Grapeses have never moved past the tragedy. Then, on the eve of eviction from the most beautiful and dangerously unstable perch in the area, they’re uprooted by a violent storm. The disbelieving Grapeses and their home take a free-fall slide into the white-capped sea and float away.

As the past that once moored them recedes and disappears, Mary Rose and Harold are delivered from decades of sorrow by the ebb and flow of the waves. Ahead of them, a light shimmers on the horizon, guiding them toward a revelatory and cathartic new engagement with life, and all its wonder.

Wildly imaginative, deeply poignant, and entirely unexpected, Lights on the Sea sweeps listeners away on a journey of fate, acceptance, redemption, and survival against the most rewarding of odds.

©2017 Miquel Reina. Translation © 2018 by Catherine E. Nelson. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Beautiful!

This is one of those stories that stays with you long after you finish it, and I absolutely loved it!

It’s Missing… Something

I can’t pinpoint anything specifically to fault about this book; the writing is good, the premise is interesting, and the narrator does a great job. But there’s just something missing here, perhaps something lost in translation. I found that I just couldn’t stay engaged with the book. It lacks the sort of emotion I would expect from a story about grief. I suspect that had there been more dialogue, and less space detailing with the logistics of the characters’ survival, more people would have connected with the work.

a delightful diversion

I enjoyed this sweet, slightly fantastical tale of an elderly couple re-learning what is really important in life.

Delightful, Evocative and Poignant

Lights on the Sea was a great read/listen and unexpected in all the best ways. Unlikely. Unrelenting. Redeeming. Outside the periphery. And a wonderful, beautiful story.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟Best Listen🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Follow your dreams and live your life; be brave; look for the magic. Everything in life is connected. These are the lessons of Lights on the Sea.
This is the best book I’ve listened to in a very long time and I wish I could give it more stars.
It holds a mirror that reflects our humanness back so that we see more clearly who we really are.
And Malcom Hillgartner is very, very good.