Lightkeepers (Geni)

Book Reviews
Readers [...] will find themselves carried along by a sturdy, rather old-fashioned thriller ramped up by some modern, ecologically themed plot twists.... The plot is structured like that of a horror film, moving from one alarming event to another, and in between, maintaining a tension around the question of how much worse the situation will get... [a] peculiar, atmospheric novel.... It's become customary—the fallback consolation of the book reviewer—to say that one is eager to see what a writer will do next. But in fact that is the case here. Ultimately, what engages us in The Lightkeepers, beyond its energetic plot, is the sense of watching its author discover her ability to construct a suspenseful narrative. And we finish this novel curious to find out what sorts of stories Abby Geni will choose to tell.
Francine Prose - New York Times Book Review


With The Lightkeepers, Geni joins the ranks of Barbara Kingsolver and Annie Proulx—novelists for whom nature is a driving narrative force instead of a backdrop. However, Geni’s debut is a few shades darker than Prodigal Summer or Close Range, and instead of Kingsolver and Proulx’s architectural prose, Geni writes in small, perfect sentences stripped of ornamentation, often single clauses. It’s a beautiful effect; pages pass quickly and effortlessly. By the novel’s end, you’ll crave another journey with Geni to some other wild, forgotten corner of the globe.
Chicago Review of Books


[A] dazzlingly unsettling first novel.... The language is as startlingly rich as the terrain, making you look at everything as if you had never seen it before.... Geni expertly propels her story into a breathtakingly shocking climax. The nature she describes has no sense of right or wrong. And what’s more frightening, neither do her characters, and in this stunning debut, both pull you in and hold you like a riptide.
Caroline Leavitt - San Francisco Chronicle


Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, part ode to one of the western world's wildest landscapes, this dark, compelling tale is an astonishingly ambitious debut.... Like many literary classics and novels that are destined to be classics, The Lightkeepers raises questions about humanity that are anything but light. Unlike many classics, it's an accessible page-turner whose surprises, both fictional and stylistic, unfold so satisfyingly that the novel is also a pleasure to read.
Meredith Maran - Chicago Tribune


Geni's haunting debut takes place on an island just 30 miles from San Francisco, but it might as well be another planet—killer sharks circle the water, violent birds rip the skin off of seals and peck humans in the head, and the waters are so rough, there isn't even a dock for boats. Miranda, a nature photographer, applies for short-term residence on the island, living in a cabin with a few quirky biologists. But things change when she suffers a violent attack—and then her attacker is mysteriously killed the next day. Geni's writing about the natural world is marvelous and her atmospheric novel is not to be missed.
Entertainment Weekly


[V]iolence in the small community seems to be everywhere, and everyone and everything seems culpable.
Marie Claire


Spending a year documenting the harsh beauty of California’s Farrallon Islands is a dream come true for photographer Miranda—until her idyll turns deadly.
People


(Starred review.) [An] evocative and enchanting debut novel...[set on an] archipelago off the coast of San Francisco.... [Geni] writes with the clear, calm confidence of a master storyteller. This is a haunting and immersive adventure.
Publishers Weekly


A novel filled with wide-open spaces and also a creeping claustrophobia. The setting takes on the role of a character, and the Farallons are masterfully brought to life on the page through Geni’s luminous prose. There is a soothing, hypnotic quality to Geni’s writing—and an unexpected tenderness, too, one that belies the thick sense of malice and increasing sense of dread that swirls about Miranda’s island home…Riveting from beginning to end, The Lightkeepers is unsettling in all the best ways.
Book Page


(Starred review.) Miranda's travelogue [is]at once emotional and dreamy and rendered in crisp, stunning prose.... Geni may be unmatched in her ability to describe nature.... Natural wildness, human unpredictability, and the subtle use of literary devices are woven here into a remarkable, vertiginous web
Kirkus Reviews