Lisa Darms
Stories of survival and cruelty are often set on an island, in books such as Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies and on television shows like Lost. The titles below take the island as a narrative constraint: a limited setting that unleashes the authors’—and characters’—imaginations. The islands’ inhabitants perform multiple roles (as ghosts, metaphors, and figments of their isolated protagonists’ minds); the ambiguous element of fantasy is what makes these four books compelling reads. Spring Tides by Jacques Poulin In this odd book by Quebecois novelist Poulin, the protagonist, Teddy Bear, lives alone on an island in the St. Odile by Raymond Queneau The narrator in this novel runs with two gangs: a group of petty criminals who spend their days playing cards and hanging out at the racetrack, and a cultlike band of revolutionaries who aim to “bring about the liberation of the Mind and of the proletariat” by strolling the Paris streets, […]