A review by hmcgee
Harbor Lights by Theodore Weesner

3.0

While I wouldn’t exactly recommend this book to anyone, I am glad I read it. It is a story of a fisherman who, in the face of terminal cancer, examines his life and its disappointments. The defining element of his life has been his wife’s unfaithfulness with a prominent member of their community (this is not a spoiler, it is revealed almost immediately and drives the entire story). The story is told from varying characters’ points of view (in the third person) and includes the fisherman, his wife, their grown daughter, and his wife’s lover. They each consider their life, especially in the light of the fisherman’s growing sickness, and attempt to orient their guilt, or innocence, as well as the blame, in their sad past. The fisherman reflects back on his failed relationship and his hopes for his remaining days. The exploration of each character was thorough, and Warren’s suffering was real and intense. My only thought was that it would have been much more powerful as a short story, because the characters’ thoughts only went so far before they stopped revealing things to themselves and the reader; I began to find them a bit repetitive. The end, while not surprising, was a sickening thud, and somehow took away from all of the characters’ impact.