Sanderson’s Isle

by James Clarke

'A feisty, subversive countervision of England's lost futures and buried longings' Rob Doyle, author of Threshold

'Psychedelic 1960s London, TV personalities, counterculture in the Lake District, a lost child! Wasn't I always going to read this book? Magnificent' Wendy Erskine, author of Dance Move

1969. Thomas Speake comes to London to look for his father but finds Sanderson instead, a larger-than-life TV presenter who hosts 'midweek madness' parties where the punch is spiked with acid. There Speake meets Marnie and promises to help her find her adoptive child, who has been taken by her birth mother to live off-grid in a hippie commune in the Lake District.

Forced to lie low after a violent accident, Speake joins Sanderson on a tour of the Lake District, where he's researching a book to accompany his popular TV series, Sanderson's Isle. Fascinated by local rumours about the hippies, Sanderson joins the search for their whereabouts. Amid the fierce beauty of the mountains, the cult is forming the kind of community that Speake - a drifter who belongs nowhere - is desperate to find but has been sent to betray.

This is the follow up to James Clarke's Betty Trask Prize-winning debut novel. It is filled with gorgeous nature writing of the urban and the rural, and its portrayal of the moment when British society was unsettled and transformed by the counterculture of the 1960s is visionary and electrifying.

Genres: Historical

302 pages, ebook

Published July 13, 2023

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Itinerant construction worker Tom Speake, born in London but raised in the North, has always been told he was the illegitimate son of a surgeon. In London for a job, he decides to track the man down. He fails, but in the process, two big things happen: he assaults a woman who prevaricates over giving him the surgeon’s address, making him a wanted man; and he has a chance encounter with Joseph Sanderson, a posh, shifty TV presenter. Striking up an odd friendship with Sanderson, Tom grasps a chance to get out of London. Ostensibly acting as researcher on a Sanderson-fronted programme about the Lake District, he also agrees to help a couple find their missing child, whose biological mother is part of a commune living off the land in the Lakes.

I struggled with the first half of Sanderson’s Isle for the most boring, shameful reason: I disliked the main character. This annoyance was compounded by depressing scenes like those between Tom and the couple he lodges with. The vain, louche Sanderson is hardly likeable either, but is clearly the more interesting character by about a million miles. I was frustrated about being confined to Tom’s perspective; I would have loved this story to be told by more than one voice, to hear from some of the secondary characters – Sanderson, Marnie, Derek etc. I kept going off to read other books, reluctant to spend too much time in this man’s head.

It takes until more than halfway through before the story really picks up. The literal change of scenery takes us away from the drudgery of London and into the Lakes, where Clarke’s landscape writing can really shine. You can feel the horizons opening up, plus there is an actual plot thread: Tom’s trying to find the commune in which (he’s been told) the missing boy is living. This gives the narrative a sense of purpose that’s absent in the first half. It also means Tom’s unpleasant qualities recede into the background as he becomes concerned with an aim that isn’t purely selfish. I relaxed into it, started enjoying the book more.

I eventually came round to Clarke’s approach of skirting the edges of a fascinating character, rather than getting inside that person’s head. In the end we see that Tom and Sanderson are equally rootless, two men who think they understand the world – and each other – better than they do.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved a lot of this 60s set novel, the writing full of spot on description and great set pieces - eg the acid trip (spiked punch at a party) but felt the dialogue needed a lot of editing. In the second part (after they leave London and head for the Lake District) my interest waned as there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary 'business' (finding the commune) - in the end I started to skim-read.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the late 1960s, Tom Speake, protagonist and narrator, an unemployed handyman with brains, and a chip on his shoulder meets Joe Sanderson, a middle-aged TV presenter who hosts drug-fuelled orgies in his house. The pair overcome initial difficulties to form a bond and work together, leaving London for Keswick where Sanderson plans to research a book assisted by Speake, who is now on the run, after an altercation leaves a woman badly injured.

James Clarke is an upcoming young north of England writer, hailing from the Rossendale valley, at his best when writing descriptively about run-down areas of towns contrasting with the beauty of the nature that surrounds them. He reminds me of Benjamin Myers or Cynan Jones (Welsh), though they each do very much their own thing.

There are lots of strands to the plot in this particular novel, and though not all of them are tied up by the book's conclusion, that doesn't take away from the enjoyment.