The Islands of Sorrow

by Simon Raven

Hardcover. Good condition. Signed by the author on title page. A few minor scores on dust jacket. Slight wear on jacket spine ends and leading corners. Hardcover spine ends and front leading corners are a little bumped. One or two small marks on head of page block. Pages are clean, and the text is clear. AF

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in The Guardian noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester", and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess.

Among the many things said about him, perhaps the most quoted was that he had "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel". E W Swanton called Raven's cricket memoir Shadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written". He has also been called "cynical" and "cold-blooded", his characters "guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all". His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism....allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_R...

Reviews

[Axolotl]

Though not quite up to the standard of the other couple of books I've managed to read by the same author, I think readers of Robert Aickman will appreciate this book and its companion volume of short supernatural pieces, also published by Winged Lion Press, Remember Your Grammar and the novel, Doctors Wear Scarlet.

Does anyone know of any other supernatural stories written by Raven in his lifetime?

[N N]

This novella appears to be the last book-length work Raven ever published, although he lived another 7 years after it. There are no visible signs of decline in style or story-telling ability. But the theme of the work is decay, and Venice is the main setting, being itself a symbol or metaphor of decay, just as it is in The Survivors, the last book of the Alms for Oblivion cycle. Interesting also that Raven returns to the main subject/plot device of Doctors Wear Scarlet, one of his earliest novels: a mysterious desease brought from an earlier time and a distant land. In form, it is a 'weird tale', horrifying in a rather brisk, matter of fact kind of way. If the ending had not been a bit rushed, it might have been a classic of the genre; as it is, it can be classified as a forgotten gem. The concluding sentiment, though, will appal the modern sensibility. It seems doubly disturbing if it is indeed the last thing Raven ever wrote.

[Jay Rothermel]

A strange, emotional, multiple-framed novella executed with Raven's usual touch of the forlorn and grotesque. Superb style.

And still, never visit Venice!

[Andy Weston]

In this short gothic tale of the supernatural, an unnamed narrator recounts a series of bizarre events related to him by a friend over two bottles of fine wine and a great deal of excellent port. One wonders whether that amount of alcohol fuelled the imagination.

Ogilvie, the friend, recalls a period when he was stationed in Venice shortly after the end of the Second World War, where he learns of what appears to be a mere colony of lepers, on one of the outlying islands, but this soon turns into something far more sinister and disturbing. Ogilvie grows curious about strange local occurrences and the supposed colony for lepers though, when he discovers that the masked patients and bizarrely dressed nurses are caught up in something far more sinister and unnatural than a standard medical quarantine.

It is evident that Raven was greatly influenced by MR James, but rather than any imitation of his style, this is more of a homage.

[Doug]

See my review of the new reprint edition here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...