Kate Juliff

Yes, Another Island Book

Reviewed: 11-10-24

This is a short review about a short book. A page-turner of a book that broke my reading slump this November.

Set on a remote island in the North Sea, during a month in the lives of three main characters in 19th century Scotland, Clear has a both a political and an ecumenical background. Scottish law in the mid 19th century allowed for the forced return of small rented plots of land to the landlords, similar to the enclosure laws of England. Of the two main male characters in the novel, John is a minister of a break-away movement from the Church of Scotland. The other is the tenant, Iver. The female is John’s wife. She’s a well-educated empathetic writer who married John in her middle age.

John has been sent to a tiny island in order to prepare tenant Iver - the island’s sole inhabitant - for his upcoming forced eviction. John is doing this short-term project for money, in order to rent a building for the New Scottish church where he plans to have his ministry.

There’s a bit of back and forth about the characters’ lives before the island for the three people whose lives are affected by John’s short project, but the main tug of the book centers on the bond that grows between the two men.

I really enjoyed Clear up to around chapter 30 of 42 short chapters when the denouement begins. It was around that chapter that I felt that the story lost its course. I was spellbound as the two men learned each other’s languages. Iver has never left the island and is the sole survivor of the island’s language. John knows a bit of Scottish but his first language is English. Together John and Iver spend time working out each others’ languages, using gestures and pointing, and eventually John builds up a basic vocabulary. In doing so he develops subtle feelings of betrayal, as he’s learning Iver’s language knowing he’s acquiring it in order to prime Iver for eviction.

What is to become of all this? Mary was against John’s trip from the get-go. She is against the monetary motive but is tolerant of her husband’s aims, even though she’s not particularly religious. Iver has seen a daguerreotype of Mary and has hidden it from John. I read on.

It’s a tale that can have no ending. Or can it? Obviously I can’t say. I found the book to be a much-needed distraction at a time when I needed it. The characters are well-drawn - if - and it’s a big if - you can accept 21st century values as being acceptable to 19th century Victorians. It’s well-crafted, and the reader gets a feel of the island’s environment and how a people’s vocabulary is formed by their unique environments - such as the Inuit’s having seven words for snow, sort-of-thing.

Despite misgivings about the 21st century values, particularly in regard to Mary, for lovers of linguistics and stories of semi-deserted islands this is a book well-worth reading.

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For a minute I thought I was in 1920s Ireland

Reviewed: 02-21-23

A disappointing novel. The descriptions of poverty and homelessness was full of pathos, primroses and pity. A misunderstanding, folk-singer siblings, a kindly gossip, a nasty lad, a woke young single-mother, subsistence farming, a mean-spirited wealthy landowner, a freckled and feckless lass …

Yet we have smart-phones and an up-market deli in a tiny village, and references to the effects of Brexit on the cost of organic milk. Plus an apparently generous welfare system idealized and exaggerated, appearing suddenly story-years after the damage is done.

Verging at times on Mills and Boon albeit a well-written one, I was uncertain what century or country I was in. In the cottage gardens reminiscent of those of Agnes in Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, 51 year old Jeannie tends her vegetables with love when she is not cooking, cleaning, worrying about overdue bills, or playing folk music about lovelorn villagers. Meanwhile twin brother Julius spends time doing odd-jobs and having a pint, or suffering PTS by throwing up if he has to sit in a car.

The narration is maudlin middle-class English which does not sit well with the underlying Irish vibe. Chapters are announced with the emotion of the previously read chapter, which is disconcerting. As is the nasal accent of the upper-class landowner, contrasting jarring with the dulcet tones that fit perfectly with the well-written descriptions of povert. If only that there weren’t so many of them.

I can’t write any more or I’d spoil-pun-intended the story, and I would never do that. Or would I?

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Doesn’t quite do it

Reviewed: 01-23-23

Written in present tests, this time-travel novel is about going back into the past in order to explain and prevent an event occurring in the present - Day Zero.

From there, the beginning, we are presented with chapters with names like Day Minus One, Day Minus Two, Day Minus One Hundred and Forty Four, in ever increasing backward intervals.

It’s the tale of a marriage related backwards. There’s a twist, but to give it away is to spoil the plot.

The book starts off slowly and I almost gave up on it. It gained interest as the years fell away, but never succeeded in fully grabbing attention. And then the clinch came with a less than believable ending. It’s all been done before. Time travel, the dilemma of changing the future, the necessity of collateral damage.

I bought Wrong Place Wrong Time as I needed some light reading. I just wish it had been a bit shorter and deeper.

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A cacophony of voices

Reviewed: 01-21-23

A mix of unevenly hinged stories, tenses, people iterated and reiterated overtime, generations revisiting themselves former and later. Minor characters observing major ones. Jigsaw pieces in uneven chapters of uneven length in different tenses. Narrated in first and second persons of all ages from babies to dying men, across counties, time and developmental stages.

It most likely is brilliant in the written word, but I fear much is lost in the audio edition. Though chapters are read by different narrators, dialogue must by necessity still be performed by opposite sexes in conversations.

I “read” the book over several days with some lengthy interruptions, so it was hard to piece together the pieces, which I suspect is part of the enjoyment in the written text.

The only constants were New York City (though even this appears as text-speak for “nice”) and the music industry. And you can’t get much more unstable than these two giants..

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A pagerturner plot line with a faltering start

Reviewed: 01-13-23

I’ve been to Afghanistan though this was a few years before the. novel’s starting point. so I guess I’m a bit biased, as it brought back sweet memories of pre-war Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. Hard not to like.

I “read” the audio version and almost stopped reading after the first chapters, disliking the narrator’s tone and the seemingly never-ending descriptions of Kabul and its surroundings, but a sentence got my attention, much like a first snowflake of winter….

Then I saw the beginnings of a plot and it’s characters, and I was drawn into the place I’d visited half a century ago.

Toward the end there are some scenes and events that are a bit jarring, corny even. The plot line takes on an almost airport-novel direction. I put this down to first-novel failing.

It’s a few years since the Kite Runner was published, so I look forward to his next novel with interest and hope.

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A Surfeit of Metaphors

Reviewed: 01-03-23

If I want to be kind, I could say that J.M. Lee’s “Broken Summer” suffers from the enthusiasm and creative proclivity of the translator.

Maybe that’s the reason I struggled through the novel, as metaphor followed metaphor. The plot was almost buried in them.

The story line - two brothers, two young girls, entwined love affairs, misunderstandings, a tragedy, a pregnancy, an older woman lusted after by a young boy, a car accident, a brilliant artist, a flowing river, a grand house on a hill. There’s plenty there, and perhaps had the novel been written in a lower more subtle key, I could have enjoyed it.

But it wasn’t. And I didn’t.

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Give this on a miss

Reviewed: 12-27-22

I barely got through two of these stories. They lacked edge, interest, purpose.

Seemed to be targeting a limited audience - under thirties.

I could find nothing of merit. And I tried. Hard.

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Badly compiled including drafts

Reviewed: 12-19-22

Laura Lippman is an excellent writer, and there is merit in many of these stories.
However they are badly compiled, with the publisher giving an ending blurb after each one ends, leading one to think the end of the end of the whole book has been reached.

Sandwiched between each story is some discordant music - I can only imagine it’s included to wake up the unfortunate customers who has purchased this book.

I wanted to return once I realized it contained drafts, but the was a “not eligible for return” notation next to its title in my purchase history.

A pity; I had so looked forward to this collection after reading Ms Lippman’s “Seasonal Work”.

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Deception, love, and the Internet

Reviewed: 12-16-22

A nice collection, I particularly enjoyed the stories set in contemporary times, making new technology the bases of story plots.

The emphases on apps, , Google and iPhones, newish words like woke, and the use of names for generations such as Gen-X and Millennial will obviously date some stories. While an ever-increasing number of readers will take the technology of the first quarter of the twenty first century as natural for crime and love story plots, as time goes by the use use of what are now modern communication devices will eventually seem archaic, and future readers may wonder at the way the writer has made these intrinsic to the plots of stories such as Slow Burner and Just One More.

As I write this review there exist millions of people who, because of Covid-19 and the invention of dating apps, do not know how people dated before the Internet made communication possible between new lovers. How did they find each other, Millennials ask.

It’s because of the use of iPhones and dating app as in a number of the stories in this collection, that there is an element of surprise and novelty in the plots. While worth reading for these plots alone, this is not meant to diminish Ms Lippman’s excellent prose and her ability to hold the readers’ interest.

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Disappointing - a boomer’s reflections

Reviewed: 09-16-22

Quite frankly I’m disappointed. I am a huge McEwan fan and was so looking forward to this novel.

I’m roughly McEwan’s age so I should identify with much of his reactions to the social mores and world events of the protagonist’s life. But though I recognize them I don’t think he gets across the zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s.
Got bored by chapter 4.

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