- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing (Jan 7 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1899235795
- ISBN-13: 978-1899235797
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 358 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,087,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Booth (Industry of Souls; Hiroshima Joe; etc.) offers a dreamy allegory of lost innocence in this novel about a young British archeologist who loses a chance at love when he's forced to serve in WWI. Alec Marquand is an old man, lying dying in a hospital; he barely moves and has not spoken a word in years, but his vivid memories are full of passion, intrigue and confrontation. He begins his career mapping Stone Age "brochs" on a remote Scottish island. There, he encounters a beautiful, otherworldly young woman, part mystical vision, part flesh and blood. Marquand is entranced by her innocence-she seems oddly brazen and unashamed of her nakedness. Though she doesn't speak and he knows nothing about her, they develop a sort of rapport, and she allows him to sketch her. Their unorthodox relationship is interrupted by his stepfather, a former colonel, who offers the young man a commission as the war with Germany approaches. Marquand refuses the commission, and the colonel has him imprisoned for refusing to serve. After doing time, Marquand endures a grueling tour of duty as a military medic. When he returns to the island, he catches only one more glimpse of the woman before she vanishes forever. Booth is a skilled storyteller, especially in the early chapters, when he brings Marquand's ghostly would-be lover to life. Marquand's effort to warm himself decades later with the memory of the unconsummated affair while trying to forget the horrors of war is moving as well. Not everyone will appreciate the mystical conceit, but readers who do will find this a solidly written, engaging tale.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
This World War I-themed story journeys into the mind of psychiatric casualty Alec Marquand. To the world outside his hospital bed, Marquand is tantamount to autistic because he is inert and uncommunicative. However, Marquand allows the reader into his life, now ebbing away, years after he became willfully mute; indeed, at the end of the novel, Marquand admits to "a lifetime of self-imposed solitude." The voluntary aspect of his disorder is a surprise, because this choice is not well developed: Marquand (when young, for the point of view alternates between the youthful and hospitalized Marquand) instead dwells on his obsession with an exterior example of solitude. She is a feral young woman of the Scottish Hebrides who fascinates him. Before the war yanks him away, he strains to commune with this illiterate child of nature, memories of whom animate the dreams and imaginings of the elderly invalid. Psychological effects are thus the aim of author Booth's plotting (action scenes are instrumental, not essential), and this novel will draw readers who favor contemplative fiction given to interior exploration. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Over the last few weeks, the young doctor with responsibility for my case has been studiously examining me. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Over the last few weeks, the young doctor with responsibility for my case has been studiously examining me. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lamguage,
Ce commentaire est de: Islands of Silence: A Novel (Hardcover)
"Islands of Silence", by Martin Booth is one of the finest books I have read in quite some time. This work has been compared to some classics in the genre and while in most instances this type of comparison is empty hyperbole, this work is remarkable and the comparisons are legitimate.The irony, of the eventual role men who refused to inflict violence against their fellow man would play, is that they would often face the same dangers and peril and do so unarmed. The young man who is at the center of this novel becomes a stretcher bearer in the trenches of World War I, a locale that ranks as one of the most miserable man-made atrocities of History and Literature. Prior to the war our protagonist is a young archeologist working amongst the Islands of Scotland in search of the history they hold. During his work he meets a young woman who is at once the victim of ignorance and cruelty while she enjoys her life without the benefit and burden of knowing how she came to her existence. She represents an enigma that the author places at the center of Alec's life. As a result of his wartime experiences Alec chooses to remain mute, voluntarily adopting as a defense the same characteristic his island friend had thrust upon her. Mr. Booth writes beautifully even when his prose takes on brutality that reminded me of Steinbeck. Like the author I mention he can take a placid afternoon moment, and in an instant shatter it and the persons unfortunate enough to be present. "Islands of Silence", is a wonderful work, enjoy.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mixture.,
By algo41 "algo41" (philadelphia, pa United States) - See all my reviews
Ce commentaire est de: Islands of Silence: A Novel (Hardcover)
Scarred by one experience in World War I, Alec Marquand has had a mental breakdown and will not communicate with others, although he is sometimes tempted. He is an old man now, and the novel is told in a series of flashbacks, as well is in the present tense. The flashbacks are to the War, but also to an earlier time when Alec worked on an archeological investigation in northern Scotland, and comes across a mute young woman who was raised on a remote island without ever being spoken to, as part of a mad experiment. She represents innocence, and Alec becomes infatuated. While I found the novel quite readable - Booth is a good story teller - the War scenes are not exceptional, and the best part of the earlier flashbacks is the depiction of how Alec sets about his archeological work. On the other hand, the thought processes of the old man, his interactions with staff, and most of all his appreciation of the garden in which his asylum is set, are wonderful.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Love and loss,
Ce commentaire est de: Islands of Silence: A Novel (Hardcover)
Alec Marquand never speaks. He never willingly communicates with another person. He is very old now, close to the end of his life, and incarcerated in a mental hospital. But it wasn't always like this. Once he was a young man, an archaeologist fresh out of college mapping the Stone Age in Scotland, and there, on the remote and much feared Island of Silence, he discovered a secret destined to haunt him the rest of his life -- a beautiful girl. Given time, their strange and fleeting relationship might have blossomed into something more, who knows? He never got to find out. WWI took him away, spit him out on a totally different sort of island under a rain of bullets, and baptized him in a carnage too horrible to remember. He has not spoken since, but he has never forgotten the girl. Written from Alec's point of view in chapters alternating between his adventures as a young man and his life now as an old one, ISLANDS OF SILENCE is a strangely haunting novel. Although I found it slow going and in places was bored to the point of skipping whole paragraphs that seemingly had little to do with the plot, the prose was poetic, the details singularly perfect, and I worked my way through to the last page and was rewarded by an end satisfyingly appropriate for a story as mystical and sad as this one. Martin Booth has created here a horrific portrait of war, painting the devastation in chapters I will not soon forget. It would be hard to call ISLANDS OF SILENCE a love story; equally difficult to consider it a coming-of-age novel. Rather, it is a beautifully if sluggishly written account of one man's attempts to come to grips with a world that has hurt him too much. Readers who enjoy complex, mystical tales of love and loss will most likely find ISLANDS OF SILENCE a brilliant addition to their collection.
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