Beautifully imagined, well-researched and evocatively told, Victoria Hislop’s The Island recreates a leper colony of the 1930s and follows its inmates and neighbors on the Island of Crete through the Second World War to the present day. The theme of searching for identity is well-served as the author follows characters whose identities have been stolen by disease—some losing their physical self-image, others half-destroyed mentally by loss of family and friends. The agony of ostracism, the fear of ever-present death and the struggle to create a life where life is already failing are made chillingly real. The kindness and cruelty of strangers threads the tale. And the modern-day story of a young woman searching for her own identity, seeking her past and her future, makes a pleasing wrapper.

The writing changes point of view with unsettling fluidity; the reader’s certainty of characters’ innermost thoughts creating an intriguing contrast with the modern-day protagonist’s uncertainties about her mother and her lover. Side-stories, the flirtatious sister, the lost little boy, even soldiers in the war, all fold together creating a fine sense of people and place, a picture of quiet society still hiding in the warmth of Cretan sunshine and the dust of forgotten lanes. Secrets hurt, the past can’t be changed, but forgiveness and the choice to move forwards imbue the tale with a hopeful tone. Meanwhile the mystery of leprosy becomes something real that I’m glad to know more about.

At 473 pages this is a long novel to be savored slowly, but it’s a fascinating tale leaving a lingering taste of sunshine and mystery.



Disclosure: I borrowed this book from a friend of my mother’s in England.