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John Dollar: A Novel
Young widowed Charlotte Lewes leaves World War I England for Burma, falls in love with sailor John Dollar, and becomes marooned with him--and eight children--on a remote island.
214 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
13 people are currently reading
1154 people want to read
About the author
Marianne Wiggins
16 books289 followersMarianne Wiggins is the author of seven books of fiction including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen. She has won an NEA grant, the Whiting Writers' Award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and she was a National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-finalist in fiction for Evidence of Things Unseen.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 135 reviews
April 10, 2019
HOW TO SQUANDER ONE'S WRITERLY GIFTS
12 QUICK & EASY SUGGESTIONS!
#1: Ignore how completely pretentious the title "How To Squander One's Writerly Gifts" will sound to a normal human being. And... a title on a book review for chrissakes.
#2: Be an esteemed author and write the book "John Dollar". It will be a female version of Lord of the Flies. Don't get to the shipwreck until, oh, over halfway through the book.
#3: Confuse Twitter and Instagram with actual modes of intelligent communication.
#4: Make your castaway characters suffer and die horribly within days. Oops, spoiler. Apparently little boys can handle a shipwrecking. Just as apparently, little girls will immediately act like infantile morons who can't be depended on to look for things like, oh, fresh water or shelter. They'd rather bicker and play in the sand. Silly little girls!
#5: Assume that the text and/or emoji that you just sent truly conveys what you are thinking or feeling. 😢
#6: Introduce your child characters via sensitive miniature portraits of their lives in the first half of the novel. Proceed to do nothing further with their characterization. In fact, flatten those characters. It will make them easier to kill off in various excruciating ways!
#7: Really, really believe that the rant you just posted on FB about something that really, really bothered you today is getting your point across to people that really, really care.
#8: Imagine some incredibly loathsome acts. Be creative, have fun with it: make these acts as gross and as cruel and as pointless as possible. Now make your characters see and do those things. Why? Why not! You're the author, after all. Show little shyness in depicting these ridiculously over the top atrocities. However, do show some reticence and hesitancy in illustrating important scenes that may actually help to illuminate the narrative, themes, characterization, the whole purpose for writing your book. Just shyly or slyly hint that such key scenes even took place. You can pass off your decision not to show these things as "ambiguity".
#9: Troll threads. Or blog books on YouTube. Either/or!
#10: Favor style over substance. Misuse your amazing talent for writing idiosyncratic, evocative prose in multiple ways: ever so slightly touch on but never truly examine things like sexism, racism, classism, colonialism, assimilation; instead, unspool page after page of nonsensical, trivial dialogue; prop up easy straw targets like "white people" and "English colonials" without offering the slightest nuance or complexity; create one fully developed (adult) female protagonist and then abandon her halfway through your novel; create one fully developed (child) female protagonist but make sure she comes across as an unsocialized aboriginal who can barely vocalize her thoughts - despite how you've established her as a person of imagination and intelligence - because hell she's the only non-white character so why not, oh and nickname her "Monkey"; write precisely one sex scene and make sure it's an unnecessarily weird one; set up the potential for a redeeming love and then betray it with the most disgusting, nihilistic "twist" you can imagine; pretend that all of this amounts to something even slightly meaningful. End your novel with a whimper.
#11: Exorcise your anger by writing a trying hard to be clever so-called "review", like say this one.
#12: Title your book that purports to be about women with the name of its sole male character: John Dollar.
#bonus @squander: meme it!
12 QUICK & EASY SUGGESTIONS!
#1: Ignore how completely pretentious the title "How To Squander One's Writerly Gifts" will sound to a normal human being. And... a title on a book review for chrissakes.
#2: Be an esteemed author and write the book "John Dollar". It will be a female version of Lord of the Flies. Don't get to the shipwreck until, oh, over halfway through the book.
#3: Confuse Twitter and Instagram with actual modes of intelligent communication.
#4: Make your castaway characters suffer and die horribly within days. Oops, spoiler. Apparently little boys can handle a shipwrecking. Just as apparently, little girls will immediately act like infantile morons who can't be depended on to look for things like, oh, fresh water or shelter. They'd rather bicker and play in the sand. Silly little girls!
#5: Assume that the text and/or emoji that you just sent truly conveys what you are thinking or feeling. 😢
#6: Introduce your child characters via sensitive miniature portraits of their lives in the first half of the novel. Proceed to do nothing further with their characterization. In fact, flatten those characters. It will make them easier to kill off in various excruciating ways!
#7: Really, really believe that the rant you just posted on FB about something that really, really bothered you today is getting your point across to people that really, really care.
#8: Imagine some incredibly loathsome acts. Be creative, have fun with it: make these acts as gross and as cruel and as pointless as possible. Now make your characters see and do those things. Why? Why not! You're the author, after all. Show little shyness in depicting these ridiculously over the top atrocities. However, do show some reticence and hesitancy in illustrating important scenes that may actually help to illuminate the narrative, themes, characterization, the whole purpose for writing your book. Just shyly or slyly hint that such key scenes even took place. You can pass off your decision not to show these things as "ambiguity".
#9: Troll threads. Or blog books on YouTube. Either/or!
#10: Favor style over substance. Misuse your amazing talent for writing idiosyncratic, evocative prose in multiple ways: ever so slightly touch on but never truly examine things like sexism, racism, classism, colonialism, assimilation; instead, unspool page after page of nonsensical, trivial dialogue; prop up easy straw targets like "white people" and "English colonials" without offering the slightest nuance or complexity; create one fully developed (adult) female protagonist and then abandon her halfway through your novel; create one fully developed (child) female protagonist but make sure she comes across as an unsocialized aboriginal who can barely vocalize her thoughts - despite how you've established her as a person of imagination and intelligence - because hell she's the only non-white character so why not, oh and nickname her "Monkey"; write precisely one sex scene and make sure it's an unnecessarily weird one; set up the potential for a redeeming love and then betray it with the most disgusting, nihilistic "twist" you can imagine; pretend that all of this amounts to something even slightly meaningful. End your novel with a whimper.
#11: Exorcise your anger by writing a trying hard to be clever so-called "review", like say this one.
#12: Title your book that purports to be about women with the name of its sole male character: John Dollar.
#bonus @squander: meme it!
August 5, 2008
Sweet toasted Jesus, this book is violent. It was recommended to me as "Lord of the Flies, but with a bunch of Victorian schoolgirls in Rangoon." Apparently, Wiggins read Golding's book on a plane and thought, "It would never happen that way with girls."
I think her next thought must have been, "It would be WAY worse, and with more cannibalism and torture and rape." John Dollar is probably the most macabre work of literature I've ever set my hands on. It takes Golding's basic plot and turns it inside out, then spirals off in ten different directions, all of them impossibly terrifying. Not for the faint of heart. I read it with the idea of possibly adding it to my tenth-grade curriculum, which already includes Lord of the Flies. But no. I can't teach this thing. I'm already spending enough of my own money on classroom supplies without having to buy a class set of barf bags.
I think her next thought must have been, "It would be WAY worse, and with more cannibalism and torture and rape." John Dollar is probably the most macabre work of literature I've ever set my hands on. It takes Golding's basic plot and turns it inside out, then spirals off in ten different directions, all of them impossibly terrifying. Not for the faint of heart. I read it with the idea of possibly adding it to my tenth-grade curriculum, which already includes Lord of the Flies. But no. I can't teach this thing. I'm already spending enough of my own money on classroom supplies without having to buy a class set of barf bags.
June 11, 2018
Comments on my "re-read" review of Lord Of The Flies reminded me I had read this fascinating novel, often considered LOTF with girls instead of boys.
July 27, 2022
Boring. Contrived. Un-original. Un-realistic. Un-readable (unless you're stuck on a plane and this was your only book, d-oh!)
At anytime on any page I could have closed this book and never again reflected upon it nor was my life made any richer for having completed it.
It's billed as a 'female' Lord of the Flys but frankly that's insulting to women.
According to the author women/girls will utterly surrender in the face of danger or crisis. Cowardly and incapable these young females utterly capitulate in the face of every disaster and challenge they face.
There is no inherent 'survival' instinct in them as there are in their fellow humans. Nope - according to the author females are only capable of social conflict and pettiness whilst sitting around expecting to be rescued (or murdered).
Courage, fortitude and capability are not traits possessed by women if the authors account of this manufactured tragedy is to be believed. Instead we can expect any and all women who find themselves in physical crisis to just cry a lot and.... well...... yeah, just cry a lot and have complete mental breakdowns.
The 'horrific' scenes are forced and were included only for shock value in order to BE horrific - as if she and some friends sat around and said "what would be really freaky" kinda stuff to help the book make a name for itself.
Worst part is that in order to arrive at these oft-promised horrors the reader must slog thru 80% (!) of a story about colonial life in 1920's Burma (Myanmar)for British ex-pats. To quote another ex-pat lost in the jungles of wherever "the Horror!"
Indeed, the only thing truly 'horrific' is the fact readers must slog thru page after page of irrelevant, mindless musings of unremarkable characters in order to get to the banal, manufactured in advance 'horror' scenes at the end of the story.
Don't make the mistake I did and assume there must be 'something' to this book to garner all the good reviews - there ISN'T.
At anytime on any page I could have closed this book and never again reflected upon it nor was my life made any richer for having completed it.
It's billed as a 'female' Lord of the Flys but frankly that's insulting to women.
According to the author women/girls will utterly surrender in the face of danger or crisis. Cowardly and incapable these young females utterly capitulate in the face of every disaster and challenge they face.
There is no inherent 'survival' instinct in them as there are in their fellow humans. Nope - according to the author females are only capable of social conflict and pettiness whilst sitting around expecting to be rescued (or murdered).
Courage, fortitude and capability are not traits possessed by women if the authors account of this manufactured tragedy is to be believed. Instead we can expect any and all women who find themselves in physical crisis to just cry a lot and.... well...... yeah, just cry a lot and have complete mental breakdowns.
The 'horrific' scenes are forced and were included only for shock value in order to BE horrific - as if she and some friends sat around and said "what would be really freaky" kinda stuff to help the book make a name for itself.
Worst part is that in order to arrive at these oft-promised horrors the reader must slog thru 80% (!) of a story about colonial life in 1920's Burma (Myanmar)for British ex-pats. To quote another ex-pat lost in the jungles of wherever "the Horror!"
Indeed, the only thing truly 'horrific' is the fact readers must slog thru page after page of irrelevant, mindless musings of unremarkable characters in order to get to the banal, manufactured in advance 'horror' scenes at the end of the story.
Don't make the mistake I did and assume there must be 'something' to this book to garner all the good reviews - there ISN'T.
July 22, 2019
I’ve read this book three times in the last 20 years, and each time, I’ve taken away something different.
The first time, I couldn’t believe I could read a book that delves into cannibalism and enjoy it so much.
The second time, I reconsidered whether this really was a “Lord of the Flies” story retold with girls.
The third time, I was awed by how neatly and effectively the author employed every device in the toolkit.
From the first sighting of the snakey – that creature that bites the girl who enters womanhood – to the intense, carnal scene between the two adults just before disaster strikes, every word and every phrase is expertly placed to craft a wild story in an alien land.
That some of the most horrible events are intimated, but not described, only increases the horror. One or two things – did the teenage girls molest the paralyzed sea captain? Did they do something even worse to him? Those events weren’t entirely clear to me until the third reading, but by then I was looking for them.
Without question, Charlotte, the main character, was completely out of her mind before she even got to Burma, and there’s a definite sense that all the characters living in this self-sought exile were not entirely even-keeled. The descriptions of that time and place – the mutterings about M’pire and the reference to the female duty – brought home the brutality of a story that deftly wrangled the themes of racism, colonialism, religion and repression.
The only thing that surprises me, nearly 20 years after its publication, is that this book has not taken a dominant position in the canon of contemporary literature. Really, it’s that big of an achievement.
I did not care that the book did not explain, not even once, how the survivors managed to get off the island. I only know that Charlotte did not receive the sacrament of Christian burial. And that’s all I needed to know.
The first time, I couldn’t believe I could read a book that delves into cannibalism and enjoy it so much.
The second time, I reconsidered whether this really was a “Lord of the Flies” story retold with girls.
The third time, I was awed by how neatly and effectively the author employed every device in the toolkit.
From the first sighting of the snakey – that creature that bites the girl who enters womanhood – to the intense, carnal scene between the two adults just before disaster strikes, every word and every phrase is expertly placed to craft a wild story in an alien land.
That some of the most horrible events are intimated, but not described, only increases the horror. One or two things – did the teenage girls molest the paralyzed sea captain? Did they do something even worse to him? Those events weren’t entirely clear to me until the third reading, but by then I was looking for them.
Without question, Charlotte, the main character, was completely out of her mind before she even got to Burma, and there’s a definite sense that all the characters living in this self-sought exile were not entirely even-keeled. The descriptions of that time and place – the mutterings about M’pire and the reference to the female duty – brought home the brutality of a story that deftly wrangled the themes of racism, colonialism, religion and repression.
The only thing that surprises me, nearly 20 years after its publication, is that this book has not taken a dominant position in the canon of contemporary literature. Really, it’s that big of an achievement.
I did not care that the book did not explain, not even once, how the survivors managed to get off the island. I only know that Charlotte did not receive the sacrament of Christian burial. And that’s all I needed to know.
August 17, 2010
This book was just not for me.
'John Dollar' was written plainly to shock the reader and demand our understanding of the primitive human nature.
The writing was complex, confusing, and elusive. Who is this widow named Charlotte that we read about at the beginning? What is so special about her that we need to spend 2/3 of the book following her treck across the ocean to tudor eight little girls? From the beginning I knew I was in for a tough read when I can make no connection to Charlotte whatsoever.
And then the author takes us around to the lives of eight little girls, all different, if not a bit strange. And when the girls and Charlotte finally come together with Captain John Dollar, all the pieces have fallen together for complete disaster.
When their ship goes down, the girls along with John Dollar wash up ashore an uninhabited island. With no means of food or fresh water, the girls battle it out against savage mother nature while attempting to tend to John's wounds. But we all know it only lasts so long before something snaps and self preservation, as is human nature, takes over. And when that happens, some of these sweet litle girls just aren't so sweet after all.
Read this if you must but be warned: You're in for a rough ride.
'John Dollar' was written plainly to shock the reader and demand our understanding of the primitive human nature.
The writing was complex, confusing, and elusive. Who is this widow named Charlotte that we read about at the beginning? What is so special about her that we need to spend 2/3 of the book following her treck across the ocean to tudor eight little girls? From the beginning I knew I was in for a tough read when I can make no connection to Charlotte whatsoever.
And then the author takes us around to the lives of eight little girls, all different, if not a bit strange. And when the girls and Charlotte finally come together with Captain John Dollar, all the pieces have fallen together for complete disaster.
When their ship goes down, the girls along with John Dollar wash up ashore an uninhabited island. With no means of food or fresh water, the girls battle it out against savage mother nature while attempting to tend to John's wounds. But we all know it only lasts so long before something snaps and self preservation, as is human nature, takes over. And when that happens, some of these sweet litle girls just aren't so sweet after all.
Read this if you must but be warned: You're in for a rough ride.
October 8, 2007
Lord of the Flies just got its period. Wow. This book will shake you up. It manages to be both the biography of a wayward feminist traveller, a study in adolescent dynamics, a scathing commenatary on collonialism, and a nauseating thriller all rolled into one. HOW DOES SHE DO IT, you're wondering. Well, read this book. Then, reread it.
September 26, 2017
Amidst the news about an upcoming exciting, not at all derivative or formulaic remake of Lord of the Flies movie but WITH GIRLS, astute librarians tasked with finding LotF books but WITH GIRLS for the literary set provided this title (as well as Libba Bray's Beauty Queens, which is queued somewhere in my endless line of to-be-listened to titles since I've decided that I don't have nearly enough physical books to read). Is this truly the Lord of the Flies but WITH GIRLS book of your dreams? The answer is sort of. Unfortunately, John Dollar seems like it wants to be a few different books, a scheme that usually doesn't end well because none of the things it wants to be are done as effectively as they should be. There's a confusing prologue that isn't really cleared up in retrospect, a lot of backstory about a character who isn't even the latter half of the book, some terrifying bits about colonialism that I don't necessarily think Wiggins intended to be as scary as the LotFbWG bits but here we are, and then everything segues rather abruptly into stranded on the island mayhem. The writing is lovely but maddeningly vague (for example, although I read enough to know that it was a bad scene, I remain unsure as to who exactly did what to those turtles) and a few dozen pages of confusing island times left me unable to justify why those girls did what they did . I guess I just like to revel in my gross denouements a little longer, you know? That's got to be one of the reasons that one reads Lord of the Flies but WITH GIRLS, or at least this one.
December 30, 2023
V jednom archívnom článku NY Times použijú autorkin citát, kde vraví, že cestou lietadlom do Londýna:
''I was re-reading 'Lord of the Flies,' and I thought, 'Wrong, guys. Girls wouldn't do it this way,' '' she said in a telephone interview from London, where she lives with her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie."
Každopádne odporúčam nič si o príbehu nečítať, ak sa na túto knižku chystáte (najlepšie ani nasledovné riadky, aj keď neprezradím nič konkrétne). Má dve tváre, jedna pôsobí až idylicky a útulne - i keď znepokojenie pod povrchom cítiť - a tá druhá je výrazne brutálna, miestami poriadne morbídna.
Nedopovedanosť - ako s ňou Wiggins pracuje - je skvelá. John Dollar je naozaj kniha, na ktorú sa nezabúda.
V češtine vyšla pod názvom Peklo na ostrově - príhodný, ale pomerne bulvárny názov. Preklad textu však na mňa pôsobil dobre. Nejde o žiadny lacný paperback - je to silný román, elegantná kritika kolonializmu.
Ešte raz citácia z archívneho článku NY Times
By the time the plane landed, she had decided to write ''a kind of female 'Lord of the Flies.' And I wanted it to be about the British form of empire; I'm driven by wanting to write about how we came to be Americans.'' Link: https://archive.nytimes.com/.../26/nn...
''I was re-reading 'Lord of the Flies,' and I thought, 'Wrong, guys. Girls wouldn't do it this way,' '' she said in a telephone interview from London, where she lives with her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie."
Každopádne odporúčam nič si o príbehu nečítať, ak sa na túto knižku chystáte (najlepšie ani nasledovné riadky, aj keď neprezradím nič konkrétne). Má dve tváre, jedna pôsobí až idylicky a útulne - i keď znepokojenie pod povrchom cítiť - a tá druhá je výrazne brutálna, miestami poriadne morbídna.
Nedopovedanosť - ako s ňou Wiggins pracuje - je skvelá. John Dollar je naozaj kniha, na ktorú sa nezabúda.
V češtine vyšla pod názvom Peklo na ostrově - príhodný, ale pomerne bulvárny názov. Preklad textu však na mňa pôsobil dobre. Nejde o žiadny lacný paperback - je to silný román, elegantná kritika kolonializmu.
Ešte raz citácia z archívneho článku NY Times
By the time the plane landed, she had decided to write ''a kind of female 'Lord of the Flies.' And I wanted it to be about the British form of empire; I'm driven by wanting to write about how we came to be Americans.'' Link: https://archive.nytimes.com/.../26/nn...
May 12, 2008
1. I only read this because Marianne Wiggins was Salman Rushdie's wife. I don't know or care if she still is.
2. This book is completely derivative and has not one original thought.
3. They eat John Dollar.
2. This book is completely derivative and has not one original thought.
3. They eat John Dollar.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 27, 2018
I am grateful that one of my GR friends had this book mentioned on their re-read of Lord of the Flies. I had never heard of it.
I read LOTF in high school (almost 4 decades ago) and it was torture. The violence. The endless classtime we spent analyzing the flowerful and unreachable (to me) language. I had no interest in re-reading that particular adolescent high school english class torture.
But this book. THIS BOOK.
I found myself laughing quite a bit in the clever way Ms. Wiggins drew the largish cast of English colonial characters in the first half of the book. This character development allowed the dark twist of the storyline to have a 'show don't tell' feel throughout the devastating shipwrecks that occur and the depths the mostly child survivors dove into for survival.
However, some of it *is told* and it is horrific and perhaps that is why it is compared to LOTF so often in these reviews. But the characters and group dynamics are so much more complex and believable than I remember in LOTF.
I read LOTF in high school (almost 4 decades ago) and it was torture. The violence. The endless classtime we spent analyzing the flowerful and unreachable (to me) language. I had no interest in re-reading that particular adolescent high school english class torture.
But this book. THIS BOOK.
I found myself laughing quite a bit in the clever way Ms. Wiggins drew the largish cast of English colonial characters in the first half of the book. This character development allowed the dark twist of the storyline to have a 'show don't tell' feel throughout the devastating shipwrecks that occur and the depths the mostly child survivors dove into for survival.
However, some of it *is told* and it is horrific and perhaps that is why it is compared to LOTF so often in these reviews. But the characters and group dynamics are so much more complex and believable than I remember in LOTF.
November 23, 2011
This book was so disturbing at the end that I don't really know how to assign stars to it. I think Wiggins is a remarkable writer,however.
January 4, 2022
HONEY THE FUCK IS THIS????
I just wanted Lord of the Flies from the women's perspective and this was the only book that came close to it, she even stated somewhere that this was her intention. Plus, the author almost won a Pulitzer, bunch of other fancy stuff and is Rushdie's ex-wife so I was like 'ok, maybe I can present this work at my final exam along with the other classics.' Too bad that out of nowhere jumps a voyeuristic sex scene which made me consider castrating all hetero people to never ever have the chance to read something like that again even though I am one of them. Nevertheless, I continued. One scene, although doubtful, can still mean nothing. Then there was the scene with flies crawling up to an unconscious man's ass. And then the same man came to consciousness (now unable to move cse broken spine) only to see a couple of girls...trying out his gear stick, if you know what I mean. Whatever artsy, deeply complex shit the author meant by this, I am simply not bothered to acknowledge it. This book needs to be either burned or made as infamous as the My Immortal fanfiction on the Harry Potter book series.
I just wanted Lord of the Flies from the women's perspective and this was the only book that came close to it, she even stated somewhere that this was her intention. Plus, the author almost won a Pulitzer, bunch of other fancy stuff and is Rushdie's ex-wife so I was like 'ok, maybe I can present this work at my final exam along with the other classics.' Too bad that out of nowhere jumps a voyeuristic sex scene which made me consider castrating all hetero people to never ever have the chance to read something like that again even though I am one of them. Nevertheless, I continued. One scene, although doubtful, can still mean nothing. Then there was the scene with flies crawling up to an unconscious man's ass. And then the same man came to consciousness (now unable to move cse broken spine) only to see a couple of girls...trying out his gear stick, if you know what I mean. Whatever artsy, deeply complex shit the author meant by this, I am simply not bothered to acknowledge it. This book needs to be either burned or made as infamous as the My Immortal fanfiction on the Harry Potter book series.
March 12, 2019
When I was in 10th grade, a group of friends and I made a video for a class project replacing the cast of Lord of Flies with girls. It was awful. This book was not.
I found this book on a shelf in an air-bnb I was staying in and immediately turned away from the books I brought with me to read it in basically one sitting.
One critique I would have is that occasionally the prose is a bit hard to follow. For example, as I have seen mentioned in another review, something terrible occurred with turtles, but I'm still not quite sure exactly what the terrible thing was.
Still, the story is amazing and horrifying. My favorite character was Monkey, who may be a favorite character of all time after reading this. She exemplifies selfless love, which is kind of ironic since the titular character John Dollar is supposed to be the Christ figure of the novel.
It's a quick read, but not such much an easy read because the depictions of violence will probably turn your stomach.
I found this book on a shelf in an air-bnb I was staying in and immediately turned away from the books I brought with me to read it in basically one sitting.
One critique I would have is that occasionally the prose is a bit hard to follow. For example, as I have seen mentioned in another review, something terrible occurred with turtles, but I'm still not quite sure exactly what the terrible thing was.
Still, the story is amazing and horrifying. My favorite character was Monkey, who may be a favorite character of all time after reading this. She exemplifies selfless love, which is kind of ironic since the titular character John Dollar is supposed to be the Christ figure of the novel.
It's a quick read, but not such much an easy read because the depictions of violence will probably turn your stomach.
February 13, 2014
Crazy book. Amazing language. Horrifying story. I read it years and years ago and I still think about it sometimes. Like everyone says, it's sort of a female version of "Lord of the Flies," but you can really get lost in thinking about what it means in a post-feminist movement world.
January 24, 2012
Wiggins reportedly asked herself, upon reading "Lord of the Flies," what would a group of girls had done? This book is her answer. Girls aren't any more sweet than boys when left without adults, it seems.
August 17, 2011
Another book I'm not going to finish. I know a lot of maybe interesting things are going to happen, but John Dollar, I'm not that into you.
February 3, 2012
People shipwrecked on an island that then eat each other. I only made it about 50 pages in and gave up. I liked the idea, but way to slow and not that great.
Want to read
November 6, 2013I was just reminded that this is apparently Lord of the Flies with girls, and totally gross and disturbing. That sounds fun!
June 26, 2025
3.5 stars - This book left me sick to my stomach. Well done Miss Wiggins.
March 15, 2010
This book is intense! The setting is Burma, just after WWI. A young British widow, Charlotte has gone to Burma to teach the children of wealthy British colonials. On a weekend jaunt to a nearby island with parents, children, and her lover, John Dollar, a nightmare unfolds, an earthquake followed by a tsunami that leaves only the children , young girls all, alive. At first anyway.
The happenings on the island are foreshadowed in the beginning of the book, as Charlotte's dead body travels by mule, escorted by one of the girls, now an old woman. After finishing the book, I went back and reread the first part just to see exactly what the author had foretold.
I loved the bit of Charlotte I got to know. She was a woman ahead of her time, living alone, moving among the Burmese people, watching and studying them- a minority of one. She is solitary, isolated from the British upper class, although she does mingle with them, mostly because of her affiliation with their children.
She meets John Dollar after a morning swim with dolphins,(riding on one's back) which is described beautifully. He is a sailor, an intelligent and interesting man, and he and Charlotte defy convention with their intensely sexual love affair.
The little girls' characters really take over the book after the tsunami. I loved being inside their heads, getting to know each of them. I wanted more, wanted to know and hear more about these people, about John Dollar and Charlotte. That is my only complaint or critique of the book, it moved too quickly and I wanted more glimpses into the souls of these wonderful people whom Marianne Wiggins gave us.
The book is only 214 pages long, and I'd have liked more.
The happenings on the island are foreshadowed in the beginning of the book, as Charlotte's dead body travels by mule, escorted by one of the girls, now an old woman. After finishing the book, I went back and reread the first part just to see exactly what the author had foretold.
I loved the bit of Charlotte I got to know. She was a woman ahead of her time, living alone, moving among the Burmese people, watching and studying them- a minority of one. She is solitary, isolated from the British upper class, although she does mingle with them, mostly because of her affiliation with their children.
She meets John Dollar after a morning swim with dolphins,(riding on one's back) which is described beautifully. He is a sailor, an intelligent and interesting man, and he and Charlotte defy convention with their intensely sexual love affair.
The little girls' characters really take over the book after the tsunami. I loved being inside their heads, getting to know each of them. I wanted more, wanted to know and hear more about these people, about John Dollar and Charlotte. That is my only complaint or critique of the book, it moved too quickly and I wanted more glimpses into the souls of these wonderful people whom Marianne Wiggins gave us.
The book is only 214 pages long, and I'd have liked more.
September 27, 2011
I went into this novel thinking it was going to be incredibly violent, shocking, and disgusting. Granted, the last 20 pages were these things, although not to the extent I thought they would be (I was imagining more "Dolphin People" craziness). I liked the writing style, and I enjoyed the way the story unfolded, but I think my main issue with the novel was that since there are so many characters, it was really difficult to sympathize with any one of them.
I want to like Monkey; I want to like Jane; I want to feel bad for John; I want to feel pain and sorrow when Charlotte finds out. But what it comes down to is that I don't know any of the characters well enough to feel these things.
The third person perspective was the correct choice, but I don't think the story went in depth enough into the characters. It left me wanting more, and feeling a little uneasy that when people died violently I didn't feel sad or shocked.
I liked the book enough to continue reading it, but in the end, I probably wouldn't recommend it to a friend.
I want to like Monkey; I want to like Jane; I want to feel bad for John; I want to feel pain and sorrow when Charlotte finds out. But what it comes down to is that I don't know any of the characters well enough to feel these things.
The third person perspective was the correct choice, but I don't think the story went in depth enough into the characters. It left me wanting more, and feeling a little uneasy that when people died violently I didn't feel sad or shocked.
I liked the book enough to continue reading it, but in the end, I probably wouldn't recommend it to a friend.
June 29, 2021
One of the lead characters, Charlotte Lewes, is a young British woman widowed by WWI. In her grief and feeling at loose ends, she decides to apply for a teaching job in Burma. She is employed and travels there to work with the daughters of British colonists. Charlotte finds her independent spirit. When she meets a sailor named John Dollar, there is a passionate love affair. The two of them join an expedition of three small boats with several British adults and many of Charlotte's students. The expedition to a deserted island in the Andaman Islands, that was to be three days in length, becomes a trip to hell.
I found that the way it is written, with 'jumps' between characters and their dialogue, had me unable to follow the action at times. I had to back up to get reoriented, but the story itself is so compelling that I definitely needed to find out how it all would end. I am amazed at the imagination of Marianne Wiggins to have thought all of this up. The characters come vividly alive as does the environment on the island.
Warning: not a book for the faint of heart.
I found that the way it is written, with 'jumps' between characters and their dialogue, had me unable to follow the action at times. I had to back up to get reoriented, but the story itself is so compelling that I definitely needed to find out how it all would end. I am amazed at the imagination of Marianne Wiggins to have thought all of this up. The characters come vividly alive as does the environment on the island.
Warning: not a book for the faint of heart.
November 2, 2019
So many people hated this book but I’m one of those who reread it. It’s definitely odd, and gory, and totally horrific. But it’s also incredibly evocative, both with the setting and emotionally. The way in which the moldering colonialism of the adults reaches its ultimate collapse through their children and teacher is stunning (and here I mean stun as in stun gun). The nature of the two love stories and the binding together in solitude and grief is gut-wrenching.
January 19, 2024
After the death of her husband while fighting in WWI, Charlotte embarks for Burma, where she joins an insular community of British colonists and teaches their children. The first half of the novel introduces us to the premise and to the characters who will leave Rangoon on a whimsical excursion to claim an island for King George. At the midpoint, disaster strikes, and the tone shifts dramatically. The remainder of the novel describes how the characters respond to the disaster, becoming a sort of female version of The Lord of the Flies. I read two of this author’s other novels–Evidence of Things Unseen (2003) and Properties of Thirst (2022)--and appreciated both of them so much that each earned one of my rare 5-star ratings (which I give to only about 1 out of every 50 books I read), so I decided to look up earlier novel(s) of hers to see if they lived up to that standard. This one, though, is a difficult slog that’s hard to follow.
July 13, 2018
Wow! This book will haunt me for a long time, I think. Published in 1979, but set in the early 1900s, it starts off with an intro chapter that is a bit puzzling (but which all makes sense once the reader has finished the whole story). Then, for a time, it seems to be an adventure tale, written in a beautiful, lyrical, unique prose voice. Then, a natural disaster, after which it becomes a story of hellish horror. It is well worth reading, and is not something the reader will momentarily (or possibly ever) forget. It is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. Note: I looked up Marianne Wiggins and learned that she is married to Salman Rushdie and that she was nominated for a Pulitzer for one of her other novels.
October 2, 2019
This is a reread for me. A question popped up on my twitter feed about whether or not someone should remake "Lord of the Flies" with girls. It reminded me of this book. Marianne Wiggins wrote it in response to William Golding's novel.
Short, spare, yet drenched in vivid imagery. Perfect illustration of John Gardner's dictum that fiction is a vivid, continuous dream, and the writer shouldn't interrupt the reader from it. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down, just as when I read it first 25 years ago. I remembered so many of its scenes as if I'd just read it mere months ago, most of them horrific (what girls would do if left stranded without adult guidance) and some of them lush and beautiful (Charlotte and John Dollar making passionate love).
Searing and unforgettable.
Short, spare, yet drenched in vivid imagery. Perfect illustration of John Gardner's dictum that fiction is a vivid, continuous dream, and the writer shouldn't interrupt the reader from it. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down, just as when I read it first 25 years ago. I remembered so many of its scenes as if I'd just read it mere months ago, most of them horrific (what girls would do if left stranded without adult guidance) and some of them lush and beautiful (Charlotte and John Dollar making passionate love).
Searing and unforgettable.
March 19, 2022
OK. So. I read this book when it was released in paperback, 1989. I really liked it at the time, although along with many of the reviewers on this site, I questioned her decision (or *somebody's* decision) to title it "John Dollar." I remember nothing about the book except that a. I liked it, and b. it was pretty violent, but didn't seem gratuitous. I mean, who can really say *what* we'd do in a like situation. Now, 33 years later, we have this TV series called "Yellowjackets" that appears to have a lot in common with "John Dollar," and I'm enjoying TF out of it. I am giving the book 4 stars now in anticipation of enjoying it again all these years later. Reserving the right to change my mind.
December 18, 2022
Good grief, what a strange book! Charlotte goes to Burma to teach the young English girls in 1917. She joins a group on a seafaring holiday during which they experience an earthquake and tsunami. Charlotte, John and eight little girls get washed up on a deserted island. John is injured. Charlotte is lost for a long time. The little girls have no experience in caring for themselves and see way more than their eyes should ever see. After finishing the book, I had to go back and re read the first chapter again. Kind of clears up some of my questions. Bizarre story. One thing I didn't like was the author put many phrases into a different language when the characters were speaking to each other. Had no idea what was being spoken so I just tried to grasp the meaning.
June 22, 2024
Fantastic writing style, questionable-though-not-unpleasant pacing and structure. I didn't find it unclear, but it would have been improved if some of the major story beats were spelled out much more obviously, or at least reflected on a little bit longer. Significant events were alluded to and vaguely referenced later but I couldn't confidently say how those things went down- and maybe the characters couldn't, either. This was way better than Lord of the Flies. Despite being written in the 1980s, it felt dated (in a good way?) and I think many plot points won't really stand up to critical scrutiny but we don't all read fiction for perfect realism, right???
7.5/10 NOT a fun beach read.
7.5/10 NOT a fun beach read.
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