Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Fiction Literary

Lighting the Lamp

by (author) Reed Stirling

Publisher
BWL Publishing Inc.
Initial publish date
Mar 2020
Category
Literary, Psychological
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780228612001
    Publish Date
    Mar 2020
    List Price
    $3.99

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

Lighting The Lamp dramatizes the efforts of Terry Burke, a sympathetic, at times caustic and critical, but ordinary old guy, to come to grips with who he is and what his life has been. His struggle to accept retirement and to interpret the iterations of the voice in his head spreads to concern over the mysterious death of a wanderer. Terry’s obsession to solve the mystery fuses directly with his personal history and leads him in and out of fascinating, half-remembered mythological landscapes. A restive Terry is enjoined to revisit the haunts of his youth. Family dynamics of the present, mirrored in Irish heritage of the past, come into play as do contrarian opinions encountered among cronies, distant friends, and lost loves. Motivated by his muse to tell all, what he seeks in addition to understanding is truthful voice and the purest possible point of view. Aware that remembrance of things past in not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were, this quixotic Everyman eventually reaches beyond self, beyond mystery, and beyond theodicy to a philosophical embrace of cosmic apotheosis. In Lighting The Lamp, Montreal provides more than a background for potential jihad-sponsored terrorism, or ghosts out of the past, or a romantic trip down memory lane; the many-layered city takes on the function of a defined and demanding character and declares in a voice Terry hears clearly: "Know me and know yourself!"

About the author

Reed Stirling lives in Cowichan Bay, BC, and writes when he is not painting landscapes or travelling or hanging out at The Drumroaster in Cobble Hill, a popular local café where metaphor and metaphysics clash daily. He is presently completing work on a novel set in Montreal. His shorter fiction has appeared in a variety of venues, both online and in hard copy, among which The Nashwaak Review, Fickle Muses, Filling Station, Fictuary, and  StepAway Magazine

Reed Stirling's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Gripping and intrigueing. This should be on our Must Read List.

H Pritchard

User Reviews

Lighting the Lamp

Insightful & revealing

From the wharves of BC’s Cowichan Bay to the Old Port of Montreal and back again, protagonist and narrator Terry Burke uncovers and records lost chapters in his personal history… Steeped in new-found but essential truth, he undergoes a form of rebirth allowing a more authentic self to emerge...
Among myriad themes in this all-encompassing work, two in particular draw the informed reader deeper into the narrative: the Socratic declaration that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and the alarming justification of mythical Medea that “the woman scorned is the woman reborn.”

Other titles by