The Islander

Gerald Kingsland

3.81 · Rating details · 32 ratings · 7 reviews

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Paperback, 256 pages

Published September 1st 1986 by Trafalgar Square Publishing

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Oct 04, 2011 GoldGato rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: summer, non-fiction, biography

This is the "male" side of the Castaway story, and it does provide his version of the tale. For anyone who hasn't read the original book or seen the Oliver Reed movie from the 1980s, it's about a man who decides to live on a deserted island for a year. He advertises for a female companion and ends up with Lucy Irvine, a complete stranger to him. The two of them end up living their adventure on an island, where they bicker and need help when food starts to run out.

This isn't fiction, it's a real- ...more

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Apr 19, 2018 Chris rated it it was amazing

A very interesting book. The section on the Torres Strait island was especially interesting to see the difference in outlook between Kingsland and Lucy Irvine, his companion on the island, and the author of "Castaway", and their narrative of life on the island. ...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Paul rated it liked it

Shelves: real-life-adventure

A companion to Lucy Irvine's 'Castaway'. ...more

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Nov 17, 2020 Eowynselixure_book Love rated it liked it

The Islander - Gerald Kingsland's answer to Lucy Irvine.

I started this book wanting to find out about Gerald. To find out if he really was the kind of man Lucy Irvine wrote about in Castaway. Unfortunately nothing could have persuaded me further than reading it from his own pen that he was indeed 'that' kind of man.

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man must be in want of a wife.' Jane Austen. Well this man certainly did, so he advertised for one. It isn't clear from either account The Islander - Gerald Kingsland's answer to Lucy Irvine.

I started this book wanting to find out about Gerald. To find out if he really was the kind of man Lucy Irvine wrote about in Castaway. Unfortunately nothing could have persuaded me further than reading it from his own pen that he was indeed 'that' kind of man.

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man must be in want of a wife.' Jane Austen. Well this man certainly did, so he advertised for one. It isn't clear from either account how he sold his idea to marry and maroon themselves on an island to Lucy. The marriage was to satisfy Australian authorities more than anything else and something they had to do in order to proceed. I think however for him it meant more and he wanted a wife in EVERY sense.

His folly I believe was choosing a 24 year old wife when he was 50 plus. Her folly was sleeping with him before they embarked upon the experience and then realising she just wasn't attracted to him.

He fills the book with all of his castaway island experiences, of which there are two before Lucy. He seems to exult in passing sexual experiences which I believe are a direct answer to Lucy's account of him in Castaway. He does impress me greatly with his accounts of shark fishing but other than that... I found his previous attempts at life as Robinson Crusoe boring.

The reason I have and do label him as a pig is because his account of Lucy is as a go getting, empty headed, nitwit. He does compliment her for certain things though, he even admits to her writing skills in her diary.

But you will never tell me that someone who wrote a far longer, more intuitive, introspective and beautiful account like Castaway was empty headed.

Lucy tells us regularly that Gerald lacks get up and go and it's very telling that he had a contract to write a novel at the outset of the experiment and she didn't. Yet she managed to publish an account of Tuin 2 to 3 years before he did.

I feel his narrative tries to swallow hers and very much that he trivializes and yet in a way idolises her. I am much less sorry for him now that I have read his own account.

Unfortunately, though she exposed him for the old fashioned, chauvinistic husband and lazy man that he was, he exposed himself in a much crueler manner to me as a selfish, bigoted man with few finer feelings. That to me, says it all.
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