Atlantic Island (Semiotext

by Tony Duvert, Purdey Lord Kreiden (Translator), Michael Thomas Taren (Translator)

Tony Duvert's novel Atlantic Island (originally published in French in 1979) takes place in the soul-crushing suburbs of a remote island off the coast of France. It is told through the shifting perspectives of a group of pubescent and prepubescent boys, ages seven to fourteen, who gather together at night in secret to carry out a series of burglaries throughout their neighborhood. The boys vandalize living rooms and kitchens and make off with, for the most part, petty objects of no value. Their exploits leave the adult community perplexed and outraged, especially when a death occurs and the stakes grow more serious.

Duvert's portrayal of adult life on this Atlantic Island is savage to the point of satire, but the boys and their thieving and sexuality are explored with sympathy. A novel on the loneliness of childhood and the solitude induced by geographical space, it is also an empathetic and generous homage to youth, a crime novel without suspense, and an unsettling fairytale for adults.

Atlantic Island today is a forgotten gem of French literature: Duvert's own version of The Lord of the Flies, it is attentive to details and precise in its depiction of French mores and language. An indictment against the violence embedded in a middle-class community, it is also a love letter to childhood, incorporating the heroic vistas in which a child needs only a fertile imagination to become the secret hero of his or her own life.

Genres: France, Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1979

About the author

Tony Duvert is a French writer born in 1945. Polemist and champion of the rights of the children to have a right to their own body and sexuality, on which he’s published two controversial books of essays, Good Sex Illustrated (1974), L'Enfant au Masculin (1980), though these themes greatly shape his novels. He received the Prix Médicis in 1973 for his novel Paysage du Fantasie (published in America by Grove in 1976 as Strange Landscape). And in 1978, he published with the Éditions Fata Morgana, two works of prose poetry and short texts: District and Les Petits Métiers.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kids are bad, the grown-ups are way worse. Tony Duvert's perverse take on "Lord of the Flies," but with a more biting view of the world, and especially the relationship between the adults and the children, who tend to go out at night to rob their neighborhood. At the time, at 300 pages, I felt this book could have been shorter. Still, a very interesting read from a fascinating author. This would make a great title for the young adult market. It is truly a young adult novel!

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a tendency toward dispassionate misanthropy in the land of Gaul. And sometimes not so dispassionate. Duvert's myriad indictments in ATLANTIC ISLAND are definitely on the dispassionate side, but they come on nonetheless w/ a tempered ferocity. But it is, naturally, a little more universal than it might at first appear (in this book explicitly named for its locality). I think many of us when we are young (especially the kind of people who bury themselves in books) feel profoundly on the outs w/ a society that we perceive to have rejected us, and that we grow to disdain, nurturing in ourselves a molten rage. I think this is especially true of young men of a certain degree of intelligence and spiritedness. It was (full disclosure) my experience of youth. Most of us (or certainly many) come out the other side of this conditional state in due course. Duvert would seem to have been arrested there. But this is not a slight against him. He becomes an instructive case, sometimes curdling the blood, and I recognize my shadow self in his dire worldview. That Duvert might be said to be arrested in adolescent apocalyptic mode intersects very much w/ his career-spanning prefixation w/ adolescent sexuality. He is a problematic writer less in regard to mere depiction of adolescent sexuality (and forthright sexual conduct) but rather due to the philosophical frame he imposes. When the tide began to turn against this sort of acceptance (even celebration) of sexual liaisons between adults and minors, Duvert found himself culturally alienated and by all accounts bitter. Though it must be said that representations of sex between adults and minors in ATLANTIC ISLAND (primarily involving a sixteen-year-old girl prostituting herself) are far from romantic or proscriptive, it is impossible to avoid the fact that Duvert is a problematic intellectual figure (much like Hakim Bey) because he is for all intents and purposes a pedophile. I do not know much about his personal conduct. I have no bearing to comment on his sexual activity. I do not know what, if any, harm he caused in his personal life. We do know that he wrote a lot about sex and kids. And what I do know is that the depiction of the emergence of adolescent sexuality through play and awkward fumbling in ATLANTIC ISLAND is not self-consciously erotic or meant to titillate in any conventional way. It is an awkward, messy business that is nevertheless a source of humour. Duvert has no illusions about the innocence of innocence, but the adult world is such a monstrous moral nightmare to him that the transgressions and insurrections of the young become comparatively heroic. ATLANTIC ISLAND is far from Duvert's most controversial book, but Semiotext(e) has published some of those as well, and I must admit I credit them from going out on a limb w/ Duvert in general.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, stunning, thoughtful and original novel that is savage in its condemnation of bourgeois conventionality and its the sacred cows like family. Its portrayal of the inequities, injustices and powerlessness of children is at the heart of all of Duvert's writing. It recognises how much hatred and a sense of ownership manifests itself in family relations. The novel can, in parts, be compared to Lord of the Flies but it also reminded me of a short story by Graham Greene , 'The Destructors' it was made into a BBC film in the 1970s - about a group of children who take revenge on an adult by systematically destroying everything he owns. It is the same with the thefts by the children in Atlantic Island - it is not about acquiring things but a challenge by the powerless (there is very thoughtful comparison of the similarities between the situation of old and young, grandparents and grandchildren at the hands of their children/parents because they have authority/power.

A brilliant novel, it should be read by YA but of course in today's climate even to suggest it could court vicious denunciation still, it is true. It is also very French, I can't imagine an English language author writing a book like this but, equally it is universal in its scope and relevance. If you have read nothing by this author this is a good place to start.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Duvert dépeint ici, dans le cadre d'une vie de village sur une île au large des côtes bretonnes, la famille dans tout ce qu'elle a de plus misérable et pathétique.
Illustrant à la perfection le "Familles, je vous hais" de Gide, Duvert, dans un style plus classique - quoi que toujours étonnant - que dans "Paysage de fantaisie" réussit avec brio à intégrer ses descriptions de mères au foyer, de père brutaux et de vieux libidineux dans une intrigue générale mêlant les enfants du hameau à la vague de violence qui frappe l'île.
Duvert étant Duvert, la sexualité pré-adolescente est toujours fort présente mais n'est pas ici le centre de l'ouvrage. Le personnage de Madame Seignelet a lui-seul justifie qu'on lise ce livre sans plus attendre.

[Dmitry Verkhoturov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Остров в Атлантике - французский Заводной Апельсин, более утопленный в реальности.
Рецензия Горького.