Strangers at the Port

by Lauren Aimee Curtis

Giulia is ten. She lives on the greenest island in a volcanic archipelago. She has never left.

Her best friend, beside her older sister, Giovanna, is a donkey. She ties ribbons around his head and thinks she will marry him when the time comes.

The sisters' days on the island are shaped by ritual, community, superstition and isolation.

It is a place that feels stuck in verdant, plentiful, peaceful.

Until the men arrive.

And a foreign yacht anchors at the port.

And the vines begin to fail.

And everything changes.

Genres: Fiction, Italy, Literary Fiction, Cultural

215 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 3, 2023

About the author

Lauren Aimee Curtis lives in Sydney. Her writing has appeared in Fireflies, The Lifted Brow, Catapult, The Atlas Review, Sydney Review of Books and elsewhere. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.

Reviews

[Gabriela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing, Atmospheric and a fast-read.
However, not deep enough or unique enough to stick in my memory for too long.

Give this a try if you enjoyed The Colony and When I sing, the mountains dance.

[Betty-Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me it is difficult at times to deliver the words to describe my feelings about a book. I am a reader, not a writer. May I just say that I was intrigued by its unique style and mysterious story.
I totally loved this book. 😍

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

2024 Miles Franklin Shortlist

'I knew no history. I had little concept of time beyond the harvest seasons, the changing weather. '

This is a difficult book to rate. At the start it's very evocative and almost like a fable of a fictional island, perhaps part of an archipelago off the coast of Italy. The first narration is from the POV of a young girl, all she knows of the world is her island home. The vines on the island produce a sought after wine, an industry that supports everyone on the island. An introduced aphid slowly kills the industry and a way of life. This is observed by the young girl and in the initial stages by a visiting Archduke who narrates the second part. Then we are back to the girl, now an old immigrant woman with a failing memory of that immigration. I found this particularly poignant, all the members of my family, from previous generations, who were not born in Australia, came here by boat and her passage, even though it is set many years beforehand has similarities to what my father and his sister described in their passage here in the 1950s.
So this story becomes one of immigration, a story shared by many in Australia.
I felt that the main narrator considers her life through an unreal lens and it is a bit of an unsettling story, partly because of that. I found it hard to feel connected to her and that moved me away from being completely engaged. Also, reading it as part of the Miles Franklin shortlist, I kept wondering what it had to do with Australia and there was no hints to that really until near the end. Sadly that took me out of the story too.
The author is a very promising writer, I'm going to check out her previous work and will be interested to see what she comes up with in the future.
Overall, this is an interesting short and quick to read novel, that is well worth the time taken to read it.

[Mark Spence · Rating 2 out of 5]

A vague little curiosity. Not terrible, just not much there. Feels like a writing exercise or a sketch for something more concrete and substantial.

[Isabel O’Keeffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some nice descriptive writing but I found it to be fragmented and missing a story to hold my attention.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review scheduled for 14/11/23 at anzlitlovers.com

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Of all the islands in the archipelago, ours was the greenest and ours was the richest.’
A novel in three parts, a novel which seems to have as its starting point two unrelated historical events.

Ms Curtis writes in her Author’s Note: ‘In the late nineteenth century, two unrelated events occurred on the Aeolian Islands of Sicily - Lipari was decreed a place of habitual detention and the phylloxera epidemic, which had been spreading through Europe, finally reached Salina, prompting economic collapse and mass migration. One visitor to the archipelago during this period was the Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria.’

The novel is set on S, the richest island in an archipelago, known best for the sweet wine made from its grape crops. The island is also a fishing island, and its most prominent family is a shipmaster and his sons. Island life continues through the ebb and flow of different seasons until three things disturb its equilibrium. Firstly, the island is used to detain prisoners. Secondly, the grape crop is ruined. Finally, a nobleman visits the island.

In Part One, we meet Guilia, a ten-year-old girl who lives with her widowed mother and older sister Giovanna. Guilia writes of her life:

‘I knew no history. I had little concept of time beyond the harvest seasons, the changing weather.’

It’s an isolated life, shaped by ritual and superstition. But Guilia is writing of the past for a different audience. Her story written years later, is addressed to an unnamed professor who had written about the events of the past.

‘According to your version of events, an insect pest arrived on our island hidden in some bits of wood and destroyed all of our vines.’

In Part Two, an archduke visits the island. He is an explorer and travel writer. His is a brief stay, and the island seems peripheral to his visit. Again, his part of the story is a reflection on the past. He is detached, more focussed on process than place.

Part Three involves Guila’s older sister Giovanna who now lives in Australia. Giovanna is communicating with the professor. She was one of the last people to leave the island, and the professor is interested in her memories. At first Giovanna is reluctant to talk but becomes more engaged later. Giovanna has been dispossessed, and is still torn between S and Australia:

‘Would you like to go back?
I don't think so..
You are happy here?
It is all that I know.
This is your island?
Not at all.’

As I finished this novel, I thought about how, in isolated communities (such as on S) outsiders are often (if not always) blamed for things that go wrong. The islanders think that the prisoners caused the failure of the grape crop. A clear link is seen between cause and effect, no need to look further: what is phylloxera? Guilia remembered life at ten, the archduke was passing through, Giovanna has moved to Australia via Messina.

Dark. Intriguing. Memorable.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Quiet Contemplative Novel

We are on a volcanic island somewhere in the Mediterranean where life is very insular and hasn't changed in generations. There is a self-appointed leader of this island, the ever so genial 'Captain' both in name and profession who islanders are totally reliant upon to bring in supplies.

Then, one day, everything changes when a boat load of strangers dock at the port. The captain says it is nothing to worry about, but should the islanders believe him.

We hear from three perspectives, all looking back in various ways after some decades in various ways. Two sisters who live on the island one ten the other an older teenager and someone else who is first spotted in his own yacht moored off shore. Who is he?

This is a novel about perception and memory, and I recommend it for fans of The Colony by Audrey Magee. The two books are not similar when it comes to content but very much in vibe.

[holly baby · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my heart this is rated 3.5 but that is a platform allowance issue💔💔 Imagery & world buliding was near magical and engrossing, but could only take my enjoyment so far. Not to say i didn’t enjoy this book- i did, i just personally wished the storylines were more developed, and saw through. I know not all stories need to wrap up in such a concise way, but it felt as if the intentions of characters were never really defined enough throughout the story as a whole. Idk. I read the guardians review for strangers on the port & was like yeeesss exactly that but now as i go to write my own review I find myself unable to find the right words. Anyway, im glad i read it and i enjoyed! thank you to my writing & editing professor for recommending this book!

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as it is the second (and newly published) novel, from an author who in late April 2023 was selected for the decennial Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.

It has now been longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin Prize.

An Author’s Note sets out the historical starting point for a novel which is otherwise far from a historical fiction, being of the rather fragmentary and elliptical style which clearly the Granta panel saw as part of the current direction of the best of British-based, novelists: the overlap is strongest with the recent work of the 2023 Booker longlisted Sarah Bernstein and the previously Booked longlisted Sophie Mackintosh (both of who write books which are both historical/geographical in their launch point but only in their launch point).

From the Author’s note: “In the late nineteenth century, two unrelated events occurred on the Aeolian Islands of Sicily - Lipari was decreed a place of habitual detention and the phylloxera epidemic, which had been spreading through Europe, finally reached Salina, prompting economic collapse and mass migration. One visitor to the archipelago during this period was the Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria”

In this novel the book is set on S - a Green Volcanic Island in an archipelago – one best known for the sweet wine made from its grape crops (but also a farming/fishing island), with the Island’s most prominent family a Shipmaster and his sons (the Shipmaster, an export trader and fleet owner seen as something of a beneficent overseer by the Islanders). The Island life is almost timeless in its seasons (with time more circular than linear) until two things – seen as related by the Islanders – disturb the balance: the installation on the Island of a group of prisoners, and a blight that decimates the grape crop. A third disturbance is the visit to the Island of a visiting nobleman.

The story is told in three first party sections: the first by Guilia, at the time a 10 year old girl who lived with her widowed mother and older sister and is addressed, much later, to an unnamed Professor who has seemingly written about the events on the Island. In the pages she tries to explain how she made sense of what she saw on the Island from her, at least then, very circumscribed perspective.

I have told you already that I had no sense of the world outside the archipelago. The world was our island. The world was our square. It was the alleyways above the fishing dock, Mother's fingers stroking our hair, the black rocks on the beach, the yellow church, the baker's blue shop. Now a picture of life beyond the archipelago was forming. It was a composite of those black-and-white images, prisoners from the mainland, the swan people with the feathered necks that the shipmaster secretly met. You must understand: I had never left our island. Had never even seen it from the outside on a boat. Mother had strictly forbidden us from stepping onto any sea vessel.

The second is by the nobleman – the Archduke – a travel/nature writer and explorer – and is his recollections, again written much later, of his brief stay on S – some of it also reflections on the writing process (including interestingly – for a second time novelist like Curtis - his thoughts on his debut book – a guide to Venice).

I have read over these pages. It is not coming out how I intended at all. Writing is like sleeping; you loosen the grip on your consciousness and suddenly old friends and foes appear in the dark. A vaguely familiar face emerges from obscurity and announces its unexpected importance in your life. A memory you may have wished to forget rounds a corner and waves its hand. Subjects to which one has given little thought in daylight hours come up recurrently. I have known writing to be magnetic, pulling me in directions I have not willingly wanted to go. I have spent the last twenty years planning the precise route of my travels, and it is difficult to surrender to such an unknowable course.

The third is ostensibly by Giulia’s older sister Giovanna – now living as an immigrant away from the Island may years later and communicating, rather reluctantly at first, with the Professor from the first section as they try to get her to talk about her memories of leaving the island – one of the last to leave in the economic devastation that followed the vine blight. This section is at once: the most formally complex - it is punctuated with telephone calls between the two, starts as mainly second person descriptions of her leaving and journey which are effectively the Professor trying to stir her imagination with his ideas on what she must have experienced, and then turns into her own first party account although she is far from clear if her memories are real or borrowed; and the least enigmatic/most grounded in time and place – the family move first of all to Messina in the aftermath of the 1911 earthquake and end up in Australia.

Thematically the book ends as an oblique examination of isolated communities, of the fear of outsiders (there is an implicit irony in the islanders blame of the prisoners for the loss of their grape crop and the later implied internment of “enemy” immigrants in wartime Australia) and of memories of home (including who gets to tell the emigrants/immigrants story) – it is certainly well written but perhaps a little too enigmatic.

Would you like to go back?
I don't think so..
You are happy here?
It is all that I know.
This is your island?
Not at all.

[Giovanna Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first book of 2024. An interesting fictional exploration of a small island of Italy, slowly changing from 'the old ways' due to invasion - of phylloxera. Also human visitors change the landscape and the feeling within the village.
Told from 3 viewpoints, the lasts is the choppiest. There are some lovely descriptions of the island and the suspicious locals. Whilst the novel touches on some interesting themes, for me it would have had more of an impact with taking some of those themes and exploring them more, rather than skimming. Still, an interesting read.

[Aliis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was completely mezmerized by this book, although true, I did lose interest a bit somewhere when part one ended and part two began. The shift was, at first, too much for me. But it happens, mood changes etc etc. I picked it up again from where I'd previously left off from page 90 (I think) and from there onwards I got into the story again and my excitement arose! I enjoyed part three very much! It was haunting, beautiful prose, the complexity of memory. (Ps: I've also read Dolores, which I also liked)

[Gavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well crafted allegorical (?) novel. What happens to an insular society when things start to go wrong simultaneously with the arrival of different people. How the rich and powerful and the religious foment anxiety to retain their positions. Or am I reading too much into a delightfully written story? I liked that the author did not head down the quirky village character trope -instead keeping the ensemble cast to believable characters. Well paced and very well written.

[Bronwen Parry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointed - gets interesting and ends.

The novel starts well and builds good momentum before veering off course and abruptly ending mid story. I’m not sure what the author was trying to accomplish with the disjointed back and forth of the latter pages other than confusing the reader.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

"People are a source of great pleasure inkfd. They bring spontaneity into what would otherwise feel like a scripted affair. They shock you out of yourself. They change you. But they can also cause great pain. It is uncomplicated to love a mountain. All that is required is that you turn your attention to it. Nature asks so little for what it provides."

[Ben Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the Miles Franklin long list. I enjoyed the writing; it’s gentle and evocative. Creates a nice sense of place. There was something stopping it from being a five star read though. It didn’t fully click as a novel, for me. Still, worth reading.

[Jude O'Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Lauren Thornton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, more of a 3.5/4 I think. Some really lovely phrases and descriptions, heavily character driven as opposed to a fast paced plot driven piece.

[Killian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a dark read. Interesting at points but almost too peculiar to hold interest fully. Still good just felt it could have been much better

[Alison Deane · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Darcey Stickley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heart Sicily

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Deval Patel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not understand what was the point of this book. Maybe, I am mot intellectual enough 😅.
Thankfully, it is a short read.

[Ranjana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A luminous and mysterious novel set in a fictitious Italian island

[Ceri Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

the first third was great then it lost me

[Maud Muller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very misleading back-side text, it was average at best

[Paulie Walnuts]

Picked this one up on a whim at an independent bookseller. Curtis's prose had a unique elegance to it, and the altering perspectives each had defining voices. I just didn't find it staying with me much longer after closing.