Book Review: The Islanders, by Caroline Mitchell
A creepy old house on a creepy island, and a bunch of generational drama.
Thomas & Mercer, 2023, 285 pages
She thinks the island will keep her safe-she is wrong.
Traumatised by the death of a child in her care, top London paediatrician Claire seeks refuge on remote Selkie Island in the wilds of the Irish Sea with her husband Daniel and their baby daughter Kitty. Hidden away in Daniel’s old family home, Claire hopes to be as cut off from her guilt as she is from the mainland, but can she find peace in a place so full of its own secrets?
Twenty years earlier, Daniel’s parents left the island in a boat and never made it to the mainland. Mystery surrounds their deaths-and their lives. Why did they set out late at night in a storm? What had really been going on at the house? Even as Claire begins to recover her sense of self amid the island’s rugged beauty, she can’t shake off a chilling suspicion that Selkie Island has a dark history that the locals just can’t face-and that it somehow has a connection to her own life.
When baby Kitty suddenly disappears, Claire’s fragile world falls apart. The only way to secure her future is to uncover the past, but the closer she gets to answers, the more danger she finds herself in. Will she be able to save her family or will the island’s dark secrets take another life?
The opening chapter of The Islanders is narrated by a dead woman. She's heading out to sea on a small boat with her husband and her child, and tells us that she's going to die. Which she does, and then we jump to the future with the main character, Claire, who is sitting on an upper floor window sill about to jump off as her husband pleads with her.
Claire is a London pediatrician who is feeling guilty and depressed about the death of a child who was one of her patients. After hospitalization for a suicide attempt, she and her husband and their infant daughter decide to escape London and take up temporary residence in Daniel's childhood home on Selkie Island, a tiny island in the Irish Sea. Selkie Island turns out to be a typical small, insular community with creepy islanders full of secrets, most of which center around Daniel's family home, which was once a halfway house for troubled young women.
The Islanders is a mystery that ties its threads together after hiding the clues for most of the book by skipping around in time and POV. There are multiple characters all narrating short first person POV chapters, from Claire, to her husband Daniel, to Daniel's deceased mother Mary in the past, to various islanders. Everyone is hiding something. We slowly learn the history of the house Daniel has brought his wife and daughter to, a house full of dark secrets and traumas such that I quickly wondered why Daniel ever thought it was a good idea to come back here.
The big reveal, when it comes, was exactly the kind of big reveal I hate: something that most of the characters have known all along but which was strategically hidden from the reader to preserve the mystery. I am not a huge fan of multi-POV, and especially not multi-character first person POV, but I especially dislike first person POV where the character narrating knows things that are critical to understanding what's actually going on, but just doesn't mention them so the reader remains in the dark until the climax.
The story was okay and the characters were distinct enough, but I felt there were too many contrived plot points and damaged people making stupid and irrational choices (another peeve of mine when it drives the entire plot).
I also felt myself mildly annoyed at all the references to "back in those days" when Daniel was a child, which the book makes seem like we're talking pre-modern times, but given the age of the characters, we're talking like... late 90s? Early 2000s? Setting the novel on a small island in the Irish Sea was clearly a way to obviate all the usual plot complications created by modern technology like the Internet and cell phones and reliable transportation. But there was a reference to how "giving birth was more dangerous back then," and like... in the Year of Our Lord 2000? I don't really think so...
Anyway, this was a mediocre mystery driven by various mental illnesses, and a bunch of authorial tricks I didn't love, so while it wasn't a waste, I found it and the author unmemorable.
My complete list of book reviews.
Thomas & Mercer, 2023, 285 pages
She thinks the island will keep her safe-she is wrong.
Traumatised by the death of a child in her care, top London paediatrician Claire seeks refuge on remote Selkie Island in the wilds of the Irish Sea with her husband Daniel and their baby daughter Kitty. Hidden away in Daniel’s old family home, Claire hopes to be as cut off from her guilt as she is from the mainland, but can she find peace in a place so full of its own secrets?
Twenty years earlier, Daniel’s parents left the island in a boat and never made it to the mainland. Mystery surrounds their deaths-and their lives. Why did they set out late at night in a storm? What had really been going on at the house? Even as Claire begins to recover her sense of self amid the island’s rugged beauty, she can’t shake off a chilling suspicion that Selkie Island has a dark history that the locals just can’t face-and that it somehow has a connection to her own life.
When baby Kitty suddenly disappears, Claire’s fragile world falls apart. The only way to secure her future is to uncover the past, but the closer she gets to answers, the more danger she finds herself in. Will she be able to save her family or will the island’s dark secrets take another life?
The opening chapter of The Islanders is narrated by a dead woman. She's heading out to sea on a small boat with her husband and her child, and tells us that she's going to die. Which she does, and then we jump to the future with the main character, Claire, who is sitting on an upper floor window sill about to jump off as her husband pleads with her.
Claire is a London pediatrician who is feeling guilty and depressed about the death of a child who was one of her patients. After hospitalization for a suicide attempt, she and her husband and their infant daughter decide to escape London and take up temporary residence in Daniel's childhood home on Selkie Island, a tiny island in the Irish Sea. Selkie Island turns out to be a typical small, insular community with creepy islanders full of secrets, most of which center around Daniel's family home, which was once a halfway house for troubled young women.
The Islanders is a mystery that ties its threads together after hiding the clues for most of the book by skipping around in time and POV. There are multiple characters all narrating short first person POV chapters, from Claire, to her husband Daniel, to Daniel's deceased mother Mary in the past, to various islanders. Everyone is hiding something. We slowly learn the history of the house Daniel has brought his wife and daughter to, a house full of dark secrets and traumas such that I quickly wondered why Daniel ever thought it was a good idea to come back here.
The big reveal, when it comes, was exactly the kind of big reveal I hate: something that most of the characters have known all along but which was strategically hidden from the reader to preserve the mystery. I am not a huge fan of multi-POV, and especially not multi-character first person POV, but I especially dislike first person POV where the character narrating knows things that are critical to understanding what's actually going on, but just doesn't mention them so the reader remains in the dark until the climax.
The story was okay and the characters were distinct enough, but I felt there were too many contrived plot points and damaged people making stupid and irrational choices (another peeve of mine when it drives the entire plot).
I also felt myself mildly annoyed at all the references to "back in those days" when Daniel was a child, which the book makes seem like we're talking pre-modern times, but given the age of the characters, we're talking like... late 90s? Early 2000s? Setting the novel on a small island in the Irish Sea was clearly a way to obviate all the usual plot complications created by modern technology like the Internet and cell phones and reliable transportation. But there was a reference to how "giving birth was more dangerous back then," and like... in the Year of Our Lord 2000? I don't really think so...
Anyway, this was a mediocre mystery driven by various mental illnesses, and a bunch of authorial tricks I didn't love, so while it wasn't a waste, I found it and the author unmemorable.
My complete list of book reviews.