Islanders

The group's read for August was Islanders by Margaret Elphinstone who visited the Shetland's book festival Word Play this year. The book is set in the Shetland islands during the medieval period although no date is stated. The community depicted in the story is on what is now Fair Isle. A girl arrives on the island as the only survivor of a ship wreck. The story revolves around her integration into a tight knit group of islanders over the course of a year.

While some of us found the book slow we felt the sense of history was good. As islanders ourselves, although not so cut off as those in the book, we enjoyed identifying places that were depicted in the book. The journey to Papa Stour and then back to Fair Island crossing the main island of Shetland by foot was very evocative. (I still look at the mountians to the west of Cunningsburgh as I drive by and wonder if there are "wild tribes" living up there.)

Some of us felt that certain issues and narative threads were introduced and then never really really went anywhere. For instance one of our group spent time investigating homosexuality in Shetland at the time of the books. She felt that it would not have been stigmatized as was depicted in the book. Others felt the priest was interesting as a character and lent another "outsider" perspective to the community but was introduced and then dropped out of the narrative. The group felt the characters were "flat" and hard to get to know.

We also read John Boyne's first novel The Thief of Time and found if to be a relatively good read although some found the bouncing back and forth across time in the narrative an annoying device. Mathieu, the 256 year old narrator was criticized for being an aloof and not particularly sympathetic character. The book has been described as a "picaresque hopscotch through time" by it's reviewer in Publisher's Weekly - a phrase I believe the group would endorse. As one of our group also said "it's a daft idea but does make you think about how people learn (or do not learn) through living." The book was published in the lead up to the turn of the millennium so perhpas gained some narrative traction from being read during that time period.