"[1] The novel has both a present-day narrative, and one which flashes back 100 years, exploring the views of Charles Darwin and Robert Louis Stevenson.

[2] New York Times reviewer Benjamin Kunkel, describes novel as doing this too much: "metaphors have altogether slipped free of their sponsoring facts; her figurative language has turned into so many solemn doodles.

The Guardian reviewer Joanna Briscoe thought the first few chapters returned to the best of Winterson writing, describing the novel as a series of "self-contained tales" in which "the flavour of The Shipping News is tangling with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase via Heart of Darkness".

The review concludes that "the power of Lighthousekeeping is in its stylistic dynamic between holding itself together with the pared-down precision of its language, each word smoothed into a finely polished pebble, and spilling out in the consciousnesses, narratives and disparate times that bleed seamlessly into each other.

The reviewer, Benjamin Kunkel, concludes that in the novel "nothing gets in the way of lyricism or love, and the result is rhapsodic inconsequence and vacuous romantic uplift.