The Sunlight Pilgrims

I loved this book so much I started re-reading it right away! Jenni Fagan really paints a picture with her words- of place and mood and feelings and people. My favorite character is Stella - she always surprises me. The story is thoughtful and thought provoking in so many ways, and the world of the story is so beautiful even though all the characters are on the edge of extinction- it’s a very nice balance the author strikes. I highly recommend The Sunlight Pilgrims, and am looking forward to checking out more of Jenni Fagan’s work!- Jen W

Enjoyed the book.

I was a little frustrated with this book. I kept thinking there should be more to it. I liked the idea of the world freezing and the challenges the people had to face. But most of the book was pages and pages of thoughts of a 12 year old girl who had been a boy. Some of her perspective was interesting but most was pretty mundane. The other main character was Dylan who was from London and came up here to live in a caravan he inherited from his mother who had just died. There were pages and pages of every insignificant thought he had. However, when something happened, like Stella going to the hospital, the author chose to just have Stella mention that she called emergency and was taken to the hospital. The next pages takes up the story later never showing the reader what happened at the hospital.I found it really frustrating. I skipped about 30 pages in the middle and didn't miss a thing. The author is a good writer and the book is unique. She is just not a great story teller. It's also hard to enjoy a story when you don't like the characters. I couldn't relate any of them.

Jenni Fagan is a writer's writer. Her scenes in The Sunlight Pilgrims transported me--not only to places, but to whole, rich emotional states. I found myself highlighting and making notes about author's craft on my kindle; I cribbed her mention-build-reveal technique in my own work in progress. Beautiful, dark and thought-provoking, this book is a must-read for the modernist author.

When you pick up a novel by Jenni Fagan, the best plan is to put all your preconceptions to one side entirely. Whatever you imagine you're about to read, the only certainty is that what you'll encounter will prove to something very, very different. That is far from being a bad thing; Fagan is a wildly talented writer, with a knack for capturing the esoteric and intriguing in any given scenario. It just means that if you read a synopsis of this book and have an idea of what a dystopian novel about perpetual winter might involve -- survivalism, and so on -- you'll be deeply disappointed.What interests Fagan most is character, and above all those characters who don't quite fit in. They were at the heart of her previous novel, "The Panopticon"; now she introduces us to the 6'7" Dylan; Constance, who juggles two lovers simultaneously while refusing to live with either of them and makes a living salvaging furniture from the dump and restoring them to "shabby chic" status; and Constance's son-turned-daughter, transgender Stella, in the earliest stages of puberty and fretting more about what the prospect of a potentially endless winter means for her ability to get hormone suppressants than food. Dylan has traveled from London with the ashes of his mother and grandmother, both recently deceased, in plastic containers, to live in a mobile home in one of the coldest parts of an increasingly frigid country as a new Ice Age begins to sweep with increasing rapidity over the world; he plans to stay only long enough to scatter the ashes in the land of his grandmother's birth until he spots Constance in a neighboring caravan.The increasingly deep chill and the breakdown of global order is a distant backdrop to the formation of new ties among the trio, which seems to offer a new source of hope. But with all three dealing with their own struggles, and the world becoming an icier place, it's hard for the reader to ignore the question that looms ever larger: will they be able to be like the fabled "sunlight pilgrims", and exist merely by absorbing sunlight molecules? But this is the behind-the-scenes question; looming larger are the questions about the relationships among the book's characters, and the ways in which life goes on amidst such apparent chaos, even in the community that is the apparent target of an immense iceberg that the fishermen have dubbed "Boo." Don't look for dramatic, epic adventure yarns here; instead, there are lyrical prose poems devoted to everything from the aurora borealis to Stella's joy in trying to beat her bullies racing down a steep tobogganing slope, or the tenderness of the growing relationship between the protective Dylan and the young Stella.This was a moving and thought-provoking novel, even if at times it moved too much in fits and starts to warrant a full five stars. And in its own stealthy way, it's actually far more chilling a dystopian scenario than something more action-oriented might be, simply because of the mundane nature of the characters' daily lives. After all, what would you do differently in this kind of scenario? It's convincing, and deeply chilling -- in all senses.And yes, Fagan is a "literary" novelist. She uses dashes, rather than quotation marks to set off quotations, for instance, and there are plenty of metaphors and allusions. If that's going to be an issue for you, then look for another novel to read. But you will be missing some thought-provoking writing and brilliant imagery.

not only is the story interesting and unique, but the characters are SO real - they are people i would meet in my everyday life (as a millennial) - as are their inner monologues and descriptions of their feelings

Boring....didn't hold my interest.

The Sunlight Pilbrims is a doomsday book set in England and Scotland after the global warming causes a global climate shift so that the North Atlantic has icebergs floating from Norway to Scotland and the coldest winters experienced in history. It has the stories of Dylan, Constance and Stella, her son who is becoming a daughter. The Sunlight Pilgrims have reached the point where they need no food, but just live on the sunlight coming to the earth. The characters in this book do not achieve that level of food capabilty.

Nach dem Tod seiner Mutter und Großmutter zieht Dylon in einen Trailer nach Schottland. Nebenan ist Constanze, eine alleinerzeihende Mutter und die Tochter Stella, ein Trans-Mädchen. Die drei wachsen zusammen und unterhalten sich und es geht auch um die Probleme einer Zwölfjährigen Trans-Person. Außerdem ist es sehr, sehr kalt.Die Beschreinung des Buches hier auf Amazon und auf dem Buchrücken führt mMn sehr in die Irre. Der Background der modernen Eiszeit ist wenig mehr als ein Hintergrund, nicht zuletzt um etwas Isolation und Intimiät zu erzeugen (deswegen hätte das realistischere Szenario von extremer Hitze auch nicht funktioniert). Damit ist das Buch mehr ein Buch mit SF-Hintergrund, als ein SF-Buch.Die Geschichte ist nett, aber eben sehr ereignisarm, eine ruhige, durchaus gelungene Charakterstudie, vielleicht eine nette Beziehungsgeschichte. Das liest sich flockig, ist aber nicht das was ich erwartet hatte und auch nicht etwas, was meinem Lesegescghmack trifft.

I found Jenni’s name on a list of ten good contemporary Scottish authors and loved the sound of the title. I’m interested in pilgrimages, as those who read my other blog might know ~ and also allegories.I’m happy to say that Sunlight Pilgrims drew me in from the start. I had no expectations of the book before I began to read it on Kindle. You must admit that Kindle can be a sterile way to be introduced to a book you know little about but I plunged in.~ The world is freezing over. Rumours are spreading of an apocalypse. Temperatures in the world are plunging lower than any know records. Is it heading for another Ice Age? A massive iceberg is heading for the coast of Scotland as recently bereaved Dylan heads to his late mother’s caravan for a Highland retreat and to spread the ashes of his mother and grandmother.This novel is spellbinding in its description of the changing climate. The unusual mix of characters are struggling to stay alive, but alongside this 2020 vision is an intimate internal struggle of families and individuals facing prejudice, dark family secrets, complex love triangles alongside the impossible attempt to stay warm in a small caravan park as temperatures plummet. There are many magic moments but also tense heart breaking times too.As I said I had no preconceived ideas as to what this novel was about, but it has continued to haunt me for days after I reached the 100% on my kindle and I can highly recommend it.

Great follow up to Fagan's last novel. I read it within a week. Like Panopticon the characterisation is great and the description of what was happening to the country was very atmospheric.

The Sunlight Pilgrims is a beautiful and insightful novel.Set in the winter of 2020/21 - the most extreme winter for 200 years, it tells the story of Constance, her daughter Stella and their neighbours Dylan.Constance is a resourceful and intelligent woman - well-known in the area for having two lovers - and for not giving a hoot what anyone thinks of her for it.Stella is a transgender girl struggling with all the usual teenage issues, hugely compounded by the onset of her male puberty. Her determination to be accepted as her true self, and her frustration at everything having to be a battle is a central theme.Dylan is grieving for his mother and grandmother who both recently died. The arthouse cinema the family ran together has gone to the wall, and so he winds up at the caravan park at the edge of the world where Constance and Stella live.As winter's grip increases on the land, the weather almost becomes a character in its own right; the plummeting temperature, the drifts of snow and huge icicles all contribute to an increasingly claustrophobic and every setting.It's a delightful story, sensitively told - it may be early in the year, but I know this will be one of my favourite reads of 2018. Any book that gets you Googling meteorological phenomena has got to be winner.

Not a good as The Panopticon, but still worth a read. Meet the borderline Nephlim, the Moon polisher and her Trans daughter as they try to survive the worst winter in 200 years. Will they survive? Read it and see.