The author paints a vivid, rich description of life on a fictional wild island off the West Coast of Ireland in the late 1970s set against the backdrop of the Troubles in the North. It begins with an English artist taking a rocky trip on a currach over to it for the summer. We quickly learn that Irish is still the predominant language on it and that only some of the people mostly the younger ones will be able to understand him.
The next chapter gives us the first update on what is happening in the North.
There is another foreigner on the island for the summer, Masson. A French man with some Algerian heritage. He is there to study the Irish language before its expected decline. This turns out to be one of the major themes, the unstoppable decline of the Irish language along with the difficulties and isolation of island life. They do not get along and he resents the Englishman’s presence as it increases the amount of English being used on the island. For those familiar with the language, many of the old arguments raged between them with Masson stressing the language’s cultural importance whereas the Englishman, Lloyd thinks that it is unimportant and shouldn’t stop progress.
The central relationship in the novel is between Lloyd and James (Irish name Seamus). James, who to the horror of Masson doesn’t want to use his Irish name. James gets interested in what Lloyd is doing and becomes his quasi-apprentice for the summer. When he sees what improvement James is making he offers to bring him to London to exhibit his works alongside his own and to send him to art college.
There is an array of other central characters. James’ mother is a widow, his father having drowned with others while fishing, Michael (the money maker), and Francis, Mairead’s brother-in-law.
Mairead enjoys Masson’s bed while he visits the island in secret. This being the 1970s. She also agrees to let Lloyd do some artistic nude paintings of her. It was never her intention but she has become somewhat stuck on the island.
Francis wants her to be his woman but is not interested which is awkward.
Two-thirds of the novel is very good but the ending is disappointing.
James perhaps foolishly accuses his master of copying him, which is laughed off. But Lloyd recognizes then that James is better than him and leaves him on the island. Francis and Mairead’s mother finds out about her naked pictures and admonishes her. And yet the painting still leaves the island. It feels like the start of a story rather than the very end.
Like, are we to believe James will now live out the rest of his life on the island?
And what of his mother?
Therefore, it receives a score of three out of five.
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