Hy Brasil: A novel

by Margaret Elphinstone

Sidony Redruth is a young English woman who, after fraudulently winning a writing competition, is sent by her editor to write the first-ever travel book on Hy Brasil, a near mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic whose very existence has been a matter of debate as late as the nineteenth century.

Elphinstone's plot takes the island location as its starting point, throws in some old-fashioned piracy, a lost treasure, modern-day drug smuggling, political intrigue, an active volcano and a tragic love affair. Told through Sidony's notes for her book, Hy Brasil is a compelling and magical adventure story.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

438 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Margaret Elphinstone is a Scottish novelist. She studied at Queen's College in London and Durham University, where she graduated in English Language and Literature. She was until recently, Professor of Writing in the Department of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, now retired. Her academic research areas are Scottish writers and the literature of Scotland's offshore islands.

Elphinstone published her first futuristic novel in 1987. Her first historical novel, The Sea Road was published in 2000 and won won a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award. She is also the author of Lost People (Wild Game Publications, 2024) The Gathering Night (Canongate Books, 2009), Gato (Sandstone Press, 2007), Light (Canongate Books, 2006), Voyagers (Canongate Books, 2003), Hy Brasil (Canongate Books, 2002), Islanders (Polygon, 1994), Apple from a Tree (Women's Press, 1990), A Sparrow's Flight (Polygon, 1989), and The Incomer (Women's Press, 1987).

She did extensive study tours in Iceland, Greenland, Labrador and the United States. She lived for eight years in the Shetland Islands and is the mother of two children.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up in the bargain bin of a bookshop one evening when I felt forlorn with no book in my bag. I'd heard of the author but not this title, and so my expectations weren't that high. Thus, I was completely taken by surprise at how quickly and totally absorbed I became. I wanted to meet the characters. I dreamed about life on Hy Brasil at night. I chewed my lip and leaned forward when events began to accelerate and the pieces join up. I caught my breath at the scenery, sniffed sulphur from the volcano, heard the gannets on the wind, wanted to know the texture of old lava fields and feel the heat through the soles of my boots... Now my only dissatisfaction is that I can't visit the place for real! I'll be checking out more of Margaret Elphinstone's novels, no doubt about it.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once I got past the “my summer vacation” in Qwghlm opening, I really liked Hy Brasil. I want to go. More precisely, I want to spend part of my childhood playing Ravnscar.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hy Brasil is a fictional mid-Atlantic archipelago, its main island geologically active. Supposedly first discovered by St Brendan, its original inhabitants were so keen on keeping themselves unknown to the outside world that betraying its existence was a capital offence. It was later colonised by the British, and, despite gaining independence via a daring coup against the NATO base which enabled it to garner US and UN support, still uses pounds, shillings and pence as its monetary system. It still seems to be close enough to the UK though for one of its main communications links to be the Southampton ferry.

The novel is carried through the first person jottings of Sidony Redruth (engaged by a London publisher to produce a guidebook for the archipelago after misrepresenting herself in a writing competition) as a set of Notes for her projected book - working title Undiscovered Islands - and third person accounts featuring some of the islands’ inhabitants, most notably Jared Honeyman, amateur explorer of the wreck of a Spanish galleon, the Cortes.

Elphinstone manages to convey the archipelago’s odd mixture of apparent Britishness, names such as St Brandons, Ferdy’s Landing and Lyonsness, with some aspects of ex-colonial polities elsewhere, strong man government, illiberal policing, the sensitivities of the locals. There is a wonderful description of a volcanic eruption with lava rendered in the terms, “It’s rock, it’s liquid, and it’s fire. Three incompatible things made one.” Other felicitous writerly touches include, “like the smoke from a gigantic steamer that’s gone over the horizon along with the age it came from.” We also have one character observing, “‘Your family imbues you with guilt. That’s what families are for.’”

Elphinstone seems to be incapable of writing badly though here her strengths are perhaps not best served by a thriller style plot involving events just after the coup that ensured Hy Brasil’s independence and which resonate down to the present day. The characters and their relationships and Elphinstone's landscape descriptions are very well rendered though.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange book. But not bad strange. Just strange strange. And good. Compelling. But a little odd.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I seem to recognise things, as if I’d dreamed it all already. Like ... this road through the orchards. The apple trees. Meeting you like I just did. The way the sun makes patterns on the gravel.I keep having the feeling that it isn’t new. People say autumn is melancholy, but I find it’s the spring that feels so old. [p. 153]

Hy Brasil is a group of volcanic islands in the mid-Atlantic: a former British colony, a former NATO base, a former pirate kingdom. It's hard to find due to magnetic and meteorological anomalies, and for centuries its actual position was a matter of debate. Travel writer Sidony Redruth (whose career is founded on the lie of her prize-winning article about Ascension and St Helena, researched solely in her local library) is commissioned to write a book about the islands. Hy Brasil incorporates her working notes for Undiscovered Islands, along with the narratives of some of the islanders: Lucy Morgan, in love with a dead man, rattling around in ancient Ravnscar Castle; Colombo MacAdam, a reporter for the Hesperides Times; and Jared Honeyman, who's trying to fund a dive to raise the Cortes, a 17th-century Spanish galleon, from where it sank near the small Ile de l'Espoir. 

Hy Brasil is geologically, politically and economically unstable. There seems to be plenty of money for new swimming pools and the Pele Centre volcanic observatory, but for some reason President James Hook (one of the four men who sparked the Revolution and won Hy Brasil's independence from the UK) is oddly reluctant to approve a grant for Jared's research. Could his history with Jared's father, another revolutionary, be the reason? Or is there something about the Ile de l'Espoir -- commonly known as Despair -- that he'd prefer remained secret?

There are echoes of other islands: references to The Tempest ('Caliban's Fast Food Diner', Mount Prosper), to Odysseus (Hook's wife waited ten years for his return, weaving) and to Tennyson's Ulysses, to Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. There are references to St Brendan, to Vikings, to the Matter of Britain (those treasures in the Metropolitan Museum in New York: a chalice, a spear, a cauldron...) Yet Hy Brasil is also a part of the modern world -- well, the world of the late 1990s, which feels astonishingly remote now: no internet, no mobile phones.

The novel was first published in 2002 and I think I read it fairly soon after that, certainly before 2005. Very little felt familiar, except the mythic element of the treasures: I'd completely forgotten that it is also a story about political corruption, a thriller, and a romance. This time around, I found it as delightful as it is in my vague distant memory: and I think I appreciate Elphinstone's prose, and her characterisation, more than I did when I first read it.

[Hyarrowen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll admit it was the cover of this book that first caught my eye; like Bilbo Baggins, I've always loved maps.

The novel is set in the imaginary, though present-day, island nation of Hy Brasil, which is inhabited by a community descended from Norse, Celtic and piratical roots. Sidony Redruth, prize-winning travel writer, arrives under false pretences to compile a guidebook to these Atlantic islands, only to find herself embroiled in eruptions both geographical and political.

She finds herself alternately attracted and perplexed by the people, and gradually becomes aware of wheels within wheels whirring away under the beguiling surface of life in Hy Brasil. She makes friends, explores the island, and climbs a huge volcano as it powers up towards an eruption. Some of the enigmas she encounters are resolved and some remain a mystery; what is not in doubt, however, is the absolute charm of the islands of Hy Brasil.

[Joana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made me wish this island existed so I could visit it.

[Kate Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The land of Hy Brasil seems so real, I was convinced it must exist. Sidoney's explorations of this island are described with exquisite language and a touch of magic.

[Chris S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hy Brasil's biggest strength is easily its ability to build an environment with mystique, intrigue and a lived-in feel. Every character has their own nuanced relationships with parts of the island, which I very much appreciated.

I was all about the format at first, hopping between excerpts of Sidony's book and events transpiring elsewhere. The further I read, the more I wish it had stuck to one or the other. It ended up making it hard at times to fully grasp the political games at play as you jump between characters that fully understand and those that know nothing.

Ishmael was very intriguing to me by the end, far beyond Sidony and more so than Jared. So much so that I wish that he had stuck out more at times to show his importance to the unfolding story. Olly West (just thinking of the name makes me squirm) was entertainingly detestable in a way you couldn't help but root against him.

I was so close to rating this higher, but here we are. For those willing to look over the format, Hy Brasil is very much a fun read for the exploring type and history nerds looking to dive into a well crafted island with secrets all over.

[Mook · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting to really like this book. It's travel writing, but the narrator is going to a fictional island (one that existed in mythology and old maps all the way into the 1800s). Unfortunately, something about the writing style really didn't agree with me. It's not that it includes letters, I've read and enjoyed epistolary novels before. And it shouldn't be the sort of faux-scholary aspect, as I've previously read and enjoyed books like Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell which lean very heavily on that style, going so far as to include footnotes.

It might be that in come cases the narration felt like it was giving me an info-dump instead of a description? In any case, while I wanted to give this one a solid chance, I found myself disliking pretty much all of the characters by page 50 and decided to quit while I was ahead.

[Ross Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't the normal type of book I read but I was attracted and intrigued by the idea of a fictional island out in the Atlantic. That side of the book I quite enjoyed; the history and geography of the island and it's fictional place in our real world. The story and the characters I enjoyed less. I found the plot ok but it tried to build a lot of suspense over things that in the end turned out to be not that suspenseful, apart from in a couple of small ways. The characters as well I couldn't really warm to that much either, there were developments with them that kind of seemed to come out of the blue a little bit. But it was enjoyable enough.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been an impressive read. I’ve enjoyed the style of writing , and the depth of the detail into the story .
For me the standout character has been. Lucy , so alive on the page.
I liked the ending , especially the dilemma of which lady he chose to go off to , Nesta or Lucy. I hope he went to
Lucy .

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Totally underwhelmed by this book. A story I couldn't engage in, characters that I felt nothing for and writing that was competent at best. Not for me ...

[Mills College Library]

Fiction E488h 2003

[Lora · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pace of this book is slow (like the small "town" / country it's set in) in a good way, each little bit unfolding to reveal a new piece of the puzzle. While I enjoyed it, I was entirely disappointed by the hanging end. Or maybe my geography just isn't very good.

[Deirdre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really my kind of book, it's a strange mix of fantasy and slice-of-life novel and it's about somewhere I often describe my accent as coming from but it didn't excite me, I was happy to leave it in work and read it in snippets.

[Mariana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good read about a mythical island.