I’m sorry to say that I didn’t think this book, the third novel I’ve read and enjoyed by Mr. Dickson, was as good as either River Rising (Semicolon review here) or The Cure (Semicolon review here). Of course, I put River Rising on my list of the Best Novels of All Time, and I’ve raved about it over and over. So, the pressure to live up to its predecessors was intense. The dialogue in this latest novel felt forced and stilted, and the plot reminded me of a Gothic romance: a dashing older man with a dilapidated mansion and secrets to keep, dark and eerie events and characters, hints of violence and horror in the past, the question of whether Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome can be trusted. Add in an insecure and frightened heroine and a madwoman, and it’s all been done before, better, in Jane Eyre or Rebecca. Your mileage may vary, but if you haven’t read River Rising, by all means, drop everything and hie thee to the nearest bookstore or library and grab a copy.

Still, I did like the setting of Winter Haven on an isolated island off the coast of Maine. What are the advantages of setting a novel (or play) on an island, particularly an island with limited or no access to the outside world. It’s like LOST. (Winter Haven has time issues and a polar bear, too—like LOST. No, I am not obsessed with LOST.)

In an island setting, you, the author, can limit your cast of characters, and you can make The Island a metaphor for the Earth itself or for a community. Or you can further isolate your protagonist by making him a castaway on a deserted island as in Robinson Crusoe or the Tom Hanks movie Castaway. What does solitude and the lack of relationship and human companionship do to a man, or a woman? How does he survive alone? Or you can have a group of castaways forced to associate and build a new society, for better or for worse: The Swiss Famiy Robinson (utopian) or Lord of the Flies (very dystopian).

Let’s build a list of island stories:

Books:

The Odyssey by Homer. (Odysseus travels from one island to another and gets trapped on Calypso’s island home.)
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss.
The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
Hawaii by James Michener.
Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie.
A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhyss.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. (island-hopping)
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells.
Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.
The Cay by Theodore Taylor.
Island by Aldous Huxley.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Pitcairn’s Island by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. ( A sequel to Mutiny on the Bounty)

Film
Gilligan’s Island (TV series from my misspent youth)
Fantasy Island (ditto)
Key Largo
South Pacific
Cast Away
LOST (TV series from my misspent middle age)

Romesh Geneskera’s Top Ten Island Books

Anyone have additional suggestions in the category of Good Stories with Island Settings?