Good thing I like to re-read books (yep, I’m one of those re-reader people)
I Islanders is like a stack of papers one finds in someone’s room. Most of it are chapters to a guide book but some of them are random stories or journal entries–as if someone has been collecting all the information they could real & fictional, because they loved the islands so much.
Trouble is that the stories don’t all agree, there is no overarching plot and the islands themselves are basically unplottable.
Don’t get me wrong, when I say trouble, I mean it in a good way. The reader is left with the mystery (Christopher Priest obviously treats his readers as intelligent). And I definitely need to reread this book to get more and more out of it, but I bet I could reread it many times and get different nuances–I love it when that happens.
What is really cool about the book is the stories relationships to one another are as complex as the characters relationships. After all, the context for someone’s life is based on the relationships that person has with herself (himself), other people and the play in which she lives. (This book explores that too).
If you are into science fiction, anthropology, geography, Lord of the Rings (re: invention of another culture), wicked (ditto), or philosophy give this a read. The stories are short and the meaning is deep.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Islanders-Christopher-Priest/dp/0575088648
PS this would make a great tv show with its complex vignettes, although I doubt anyone would be brave enough to do this, but it would be awesome!!!
Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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