Karen Jennings

An Island

Shona Tiger

This book is relentlessly grim. I haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda, but this book gives me the same feels. (I’m one of those sensitive types.) I couldn’t look away, but I didn’t want to keep looking, either.

The Mainland in the book could stand in for many African countries which moved from independence to a dictatorship; it’s never really made clear. The Island as Samuel’s land is a very clever device, and as Samuel falls apart, the story becomes an examination of history, one man’s place in it, and how it tears him apart.

It took me a minute, but the cover is also very clever, and explains the title in a different way — I’ll leave that to you to decipher, because I had fun with it.

Because the story is staying with me, I am increasing my rating a little. I was really upset after reading it, because it is relentlessly violent, not a light read at all, and it’s never pleasant to read about someone’s breakdown; but, this is really well done, and in so few pages!

Fraser Simons

An old, troubled man named Samuel forms an equilibrium and ecological bond with the island on which he is a lighthouse keeper. Dead immigrant bodies wash onto the shore constantly. But when he discovers a man alive and nurtures him back from the brink of death, the delicate balance he’s forged for himself is thrown askew. 

Over four days we learn Samuel’s past as the breaks move backwards and forwards in his life. A political prisoner under an unspecified dictatorship for 25 years due to being at a dissenting rally, it makes some sense that he should be attracted to a solitary existence on an island. 

It’s surprisingly nuanced and moving how that foundation becomes pertinent though. His past is dredges up a kind of cyclical history. Immigrants being othered. The demands a society has of its populace. The casual cruelties of being not queer, but unwilling to perform what is expected of the codified notion of a ‘man’. Tying everything together as an ecology on an island and the internal machinations a man like Samuel goes through was really well done.

Craft wise, this has excellent prose and is a notch about commercial fiction. It’s accessible and has strong themes. A conventional structure, pretty much, aside from flashbacks. And is a simple yet effective straight-forward narrative. It took maybe 2.5 hours to read the whole thing. Prose range from evocative to invisible, meaning good, not getting in the way at all, which is a success for me. I’m fairly critical of voice and style. There was a plot thread never answered and seemed to only partly function well before being completely abandoned. It feels out of place in an otherwise tight text. 

Lastly, the ending I am mixed on, as it again produces subjective elements that are less interesting than being answered. It leads you to a point where it feels like it has something to say and then denies catharsis and allows you to make of it what you will. That’s fine. But it’s not telegraphed that way and plot beats are contradictory as to feel intentionally sitting on the fence on such a central theme. Still, very enjoyable and worth reading.

What...what did I just read? I don't even know anymore. It was interesting and had a unique vibe, but man it did a number on my mind, and I don't know if I fully understand it. 🤔

An Island

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