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Island of the Mad
Following on the heels of her exciting and widely acclaimed A Monster’s Notes, and with Sheck’s characteristic brilliance of language, Island of the Mad follows the solitary, hunchbacked Ambrose A., as he sets out on a mysterious journey to Venice in search of a lost notebook he knows almost nothing about.
Eventually he arrives in San Servolo, the Island of the Mad, in the Venetian Lagoon, only a few minutes’ boat-ride from Venice. At the island’s old, abandoned hospital which has been turned into a conference center, he discovers a mess of papers in a drawer, and among them the correspondence and notes of two of the island’s former inhabitants—a woman with a rare genetic illness which causes the afflicted to gradually become unable to sleep until, increasingly hallucinatory and feverish, they essentially die of sleeplessness; and her friend, a man who experiences epileptic seizures. As the sleepless woman’s eyesight fails, she wants only one thing—that her friend read to her from Dostoevsky’s great novel, The Idiot, a book she loves but can no longer read herself. As Ambrose follows their strange tale, everything he has ever known or thought is called into question.
Eventually he arrives in San Servolo, the Island of the Mad, in the Venetian Lagoon, only a few minutes’ boat-ride from Venice. At the island’s old, abandoned hospital which has been turned into a conference center, he discovers a mess of papers in a drawer, and among them the correspondence and notes of two of the island’s former inhabitants—a woman with a rare genetic illness which causes the afflicted to gradually become unable to sleep until, increasingly hallucinatory and feverish, they essentially die of sleeplessness; and her friend, a man who experiences epileptic seizures. As the sleepless woman’s eyesight fails, she wants only one thing—that her friend read to her from Dostoevsky’s great novel, The Idiot, a book she loves but can no longer read herself. As Ambrose follows their strange tale, everything he has ever known or thought is called into question.
396 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 31, 2018
Have you ever read a book and when you got to the ending you A) Hadn't realized you were at the ending and B) Once you realized you were in fact at the ending...realized you also understood very little about what you had just read. Well, that about sums up my experience with Island of the Mad. That being said...I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Trying to summarize this book seems like it might be harder than writing the book. But, for you, I'll try. We open with Ambrose A. Ambrose does not have an easy life. He spent his entire life in an orphanage. If that wasn't bad enough, he also had a bone disorder that causes his bones to constantly and consistently break. Oh, and he has a hunchback. He lives a very isolated life but does not seem unhappy, although his craving for human touch, attention, and connection is readily apparent (and is, truly, the biggest theme in the book). His co-worker who he has never spoken to and does not know her first name has not been in the office in some time but has sent him some strange letters about an even stranger disease she has. She sends him on a mysterious journey to recover a lost notebook in San Servolo aka the Island of the Mad.
He arrives at the abandoned asylum-turned-conference center and discovers a large cache of letters in a draw and discovers they are the notes of two of the island's inhabitants - a woman with a genetic illness that gradually bars her from sleep and a man who has elliptic seizures. Besides these two, we are also introduced to a slew of characters from Russian literature, a woman who lived in Italy during the plague years, and more strange characters as he goes through these two people's correspondence...and the letters he is receiving from his co-worker.
Reading this novel feels like reading the hastily written scraps of someone's dreams. This book is so incredibly intelligent and referential it is truly astonishing. However, that makes it very dense and, at times, hard to follow or understand especially if you're not very familiar with Russian literature. This book collapses the past, fiction, and reality in a way that sucks you in and confuses you.
This book lacks a sequential plot or typical treatment of time and space. However, that is part of the book that makes it so exciting. While the characterization of the two at San Servolo and Ambrose are all dynamic and interesting, I found myself failing to connect to many of the other characters (perhaps with the exception of the woman living in the plague years). The way the story is told becomes its own character in the book, which is interesting and ayptical.
At the end of this book, I'm not quite sure where I stand. I found the writing hypnotic and interesting but when I reached the end of the book I barely noticed the book had ended. I came away with a respect for the plague, treatment of the bodily different, the importance of human connection, and a few good quotes. However, when I finished this book I breathed a sigh of relief. This book is intense, large, and so different from what I've read in the past that it took some getting used to. I think I may have enjoyed it more if I had a deeper understanding of Russian literature.
Trying to summarize this book seems like it might be harder than writing the book. But, for you, I'll try. We open with Ambrose A. Ambrose does not have an easy life. He spent his entire life in an orphanage. If that wasn't bad enough, he also had a bone disorder that causes his bones to constantly and consistently break. Oh, and he has a hunchback. He lives a very isolated life but does not seem unhappy, although his craving for human touch, attention, and connection is readily apparent (and is, truly, the biggest theme in the book). His co-worker who he has never spoken to and does not know her first name has not been in the office in some time but has sent him some strange letters about an even stranger disease she has. She sends him on a mysterious journey to recover a lost notebook in San Servolo aka the Island of the Mad.
He arrives at the abandoned asylum-turned-conference center and discovers a large cache of letters in a draw and discovers they are the notes of two of the island's inhabitants - a woman with a genetic illness that gradually bars her from sleep and a man who has elliptic seizures. Besides these two, we are also introduced to a slew of characters from Russian literature, a woman who lived in Italy during the plague years, and more strange characters as he goes through these two people's correspondence...and the letters he is receiving from his co-worker.
Reading this novel feels like reading the hastily written scraps of someone's dreams. This book is so incredibly intelligent and referential it is truly astonishing. However, that makes it very dense and, at times, hard to follow or understand especially if you're not very familiar with Russian literature. This book collapses the past, fiction, and reality in a way that sucks you in and confuses you.
This book lacks a sequential plot or typical treatment of time and space. However, that is part of the book that makes it so exciting. While the characterization of the two at San Servolo and Ambrose are all dynamic and interesting, I found myself failing to connect to many of the other characters (perhaps with the exception of the woman living in the plague years). The way the story is told becomes its own character in the book, which is interesting and ayptical.
At the end of this book, I'm not quite sure where I stand. I found the writing hypnotic and interesting but when I reached the end of the book I barely noticed the book had ended. I came away with a respect for the plague, treatment of the bodily different, the importance of human connection, and a few good quotes. However, when I finished this book I breathed a sigh of relief. This book is intense, large, and so different from what I've read in the past that it took some getting used to. I think I may have enjoyed it more if I had a deeper understanding of Russian literature.
January 7, 2017
Purely at the whim of the Postal Service and a darkened room did I pick up the newly arrived "Island of the Mad" after closing out Martin Cruz Smith's "The Girl from Venice." And there I was, soon after, back in Venice, although not the WWII Venice of Cruz, but the pestis infested Vencie of 1575.
Space and time fold upon one another here, in this book, a novel by default, not a linear story, not even a puzzle of mirrors such as, say, "Catch-22", and without Heller's humor. Nor do we have a classic boy meets girl tale, nor a good vs. evil meditation as Cruz gave us. This is something different, a poetic prose dream, page upon the page of profundity followed by a page with a single short line. You must figure it out, or go for the ride. Once the hook is well set, you may be in for an all-nighter of deep concentration, recalling those undergraduate days of joyful cramming. Indeed, I suspect this title will be on undergraduate reading lists next year.
Highly Recommended.
Space and time fold upon one another here, in this book, a novel by default, not a linear story, not even a puzzle of mirrors such as, say, "Catch-22", and without Heller's humor. Nor do we have a classic boy meets girl tale, nor a good vs. evil meditation as Cruz gave us. This is something different, a poetic prose dream, page upon the page of profundity followed by a page with a single short line. You must figure it out, or go for the ride. Once the hook is well set, you may be in for an all-nighter of deep concentration, recalling those undergraduate days of joyful cramming. Indeed, I suspect this title will be on undergraduate reading lists next year.
Highly Recommended.
May 8, 2019
I have no idea what I just read. While the prose is beautiful and the snippets of letters in the highly epistolary Parts 2 and 3 are poetic in a ramblingly mad sort of way, this "novel" is not linear and there isn't much of a coherent story.
There are 4 main "story-lines":
1) In the current day, "the hunchback of Venice" aka "Ambrose-with-the-brittle-bone-disease" aka "Anselm" aka "A" (his names are discussed throughout the novel) embarks on a journey to San Servolo/"the Island of the Mad" in the Venetian Lagoon to pursue a mysterious, long-lost notebook after his coworker has mysteriously disappeared...
2) In the past, the former inhabitants of the island's sanatorium (a woman slowly going mad and blind from her genetic inability to sleep, and a man who experiences epileptic seizures) form an odd friendship over Dostoevsky's "The Idiot"...
3) In the 16th century, Frieda (from Mikhail Bulgakov’s Soviet-era masterpiece, The Master and Margarita) has murdered her newborn and suffers through a miserable existence in the plague-riddled streets Venice...
4) Even further in the past, Pontius Pilate seeks comfort from his loyal dog as his guilt/obsession with Christ and migraines haunt him ...
Are you still with me???
Now imagine that those 4 story lines were written on sheets of paper, then dropped, scattered around the editor's room, scooped up out of order, and then stapled together into a novel draft. Then the draft somehow got published. The book bounces from story to story, sometimes showing snippets of plot development, but ultimately revealing that the thoughts or events previously established were merely fever dreams, delusions, and figments of imagination. Time, space, and existence are incredibly malleable for each of the characters, with Frieda talking to A in the current day, or A watching the relationship between the Sleepless Woman and the Epileptic Man unfold on a green hill in Switzerland, A receiving mysterious but strangely intimate letters referencing Pilate in the modern day... you will either have a difficult slog through an absurd but beautiful literary work, OR enjoy the ride and go a bit mad as well as you read each line and take it for what it is... a story about lonely souls and their attempts to foster connections.
There are 4 main "story-lines":
1) In the current day, "the hunchback of Venice" aka "Ambrose-with-the-brittle-bone-disease" aka "Anselm" aka "A" (his names are discussed throughout the novel) embarks on a journey to San Servolo/"the Island of the Mad" in the Venetian Lagoon to pursue a mysterious, long-lost notebook after his coworker has mysteriously disappeared...
2) In the past, the former inhabitants of the island's sanatorium (a woman slowly going mad and blind from her genetic inability to sleep, and a man who experiences epileptic seizures) form an odd friendship over Dostoevsky's "The Idiot"...
3) In the 16th century, Frieda (from Mikhail Bulgakov’s Soviet-era masterpiece, The Master and Margarita) has murdered her newborn and suffers through a miserable existence in the plague-riddled streets Venice...
4) Even further in the past, Pontius Pilate seeks comfort from his loyal dog as his guilt/obsession with Christ and migraines haunt him ...
Are you still with me???
Now imagine that those 4 story lines were written on sheets of paper, then dropped, scattered around the editor's room, scooped up out of order, and then stapled together into a novel draft. Then the draft somehow got published. The book bounces from story to story, sometimes showing snippets of plot development, but ultimately revealing that the thoughts or events previously established were merely fever dreams, delusions, and figments of imagination. Time, space, and existence are incredibly malleable for each of the characters, with Frieda talking to A in the current day, or A watching the relationship between the Sleepless Woman and the Epileptic Man unfold on a green hill in Switzerland, A receiving mysterious but strangely intimate letters referencing Pilate in the modern day... you will either have a difficult slog through an absurd but beautiful literary work, OR enjoy the ride and go a bit mad as well as you read each line and take it for what it is... a story about lonely souls and their attempts to foster connections.
October 24, 2017
I literally could not finish this book. I wanted to like it. I received a copy as a result of a Goodreads giveaway and the description sounded promising. But I got 200 pages in and could not tell you the point. I’ve never given up on a book no matter how bad it was, but this one I could not force myself to finish.
August 11, 2017
The first book I've ever failed to read cover to cover. It's a love/hate kind of book. People either rate is 5 stars or 1 (too bad there isn't a 0) Horrible waste of time trying to pick through and retain any kind of sequence or plot.
November 24, 2017
????????????
July 7, 2018
So poignant! Historical and yet so timely!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 1, 2019
I came to this because of Sheck's piece 'Dostoyevsky's Empathy' in the Paris Review (https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...). You can say this book has the same theme, empathy -- even that it's a fictionalisation of that Paris Review piece.
And yet, and yet. It failed to move me. Sheck revolves around those passages in the life and works of Dostoyevsky that are most significant to me, too (of course: 'D's Empathy' most closely expresses my own reception of D. You didn't ask, but my 'truest' scholarly interpretation is the D. chapter in Aileen Kelly's Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance). Sheck's iteration and citation of those moments x20 did not charge them with further significance but drained them for me. I'm scared now I've overdosed on the encounter between Myshkin and the murderer Rogozhin, when I've read The Idiot 5-6 times and don't mean to stop. In D.'s novel, these are a few pages at the end of 600pp. Here it is rehashed, without addition, unto surfeit. D. told his boyhood story of Marey the peasant several times, but not nearly as frequently as Sheck. I am now sick to the back teeth of Marey the peasant, which does a disservice (it's the ultimate sacrilege to say that, and I'll regret it).
This is a non-novel. Which is fine, although out of tune with D. who wrote novels, known for deep-dive into people (and he'd almost certainly be perplexed by the intellectualisation of his content in this work). It seemed to me 'magical' without an anchor in 'realism', with a couple of over-weird and under-developed protagonists of Sheck's, otherwise populated by the casts of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and selected D. novels; along with D. biography, the painter Titian and documentation of a plague in Venice. There's extensive endnotes and huge bibliography.
Dammit, Pilate features heavily -- he wandered in out of Bulgakov -- and the first novel I ever wrote, my childhood novel, was about Pilate: This should have been perfect for me! I'll stick to her pieces on D. in mags. She also has two on The Idiot and the conception of Island of the Mad.:
https://granta.com/best-book-1868-dos...
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
I still rec it for Dostoyevsky types. I don't know what you'd make of it if you aren't.
And yet, and yet. It failed to move me. Sheck revolves around those passages in the life and works of Dostoyevsky that are most significant to me, too (of course: 'D's Empathy' most closely expresses my own reception of D. You didn't ask, but my 'truest' scholarly interpretation is the D. chapter in Aileen Kelly's Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance). Sheck's iteration and citation of those moments x20 did not charge them with further significance but drained them for me. I'm scared now I've overdosed on the encounter between Myshkin and the murderer Rogozhin, when I've read The Idiot 5-6 times and don't mean to stop. In D.'s novel, these are a few pages at the end of 600pp. Here it is rehashed, without addition, unto surfeit. D. told his boyhood story of Marey the peasant several times, but not nearly as frequently as Sheck. I am now sick to the back teeth of Marey the peasant, which does a disservice (it's the ultimate sacrilege to say that, and I'll regret it).
This is a non-novel. Which is fine, although out of tune with D. who wrote novels, known for deep-dive into people (and he'd almost certainly be perplexed by the intellectualisation of his content in this work). It seemed to me 'magical' without an anchor in 'realism', with a couple of over-weird and under-developed protagonists of Sheck's, otherwise populated by the casts of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and selected D. novels; along with D. biography, the painter Titian and documentation of a plague in Venice. There's extensive endnotes and huge bibliography.
Dammit, Pilate features heavily -- he wandered in out of Bulgakov -- and the first novel I ever wrote, my childhood novel, was about Pilate: This should have been perfect for me! I'll stick to her pieces on D. in mags. She also has two on The Idiot and the conception of Island of the Mad.:
https://granta.com/best-book-1868-dos...
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
I still rec it for Dostoyevsky types. I don't know what you'd make of it if you aren't.
January 16, 2017
Okay, I didn't read this book. I started to. It is very immersed in the first person's thoughts. He is an interesting person too. For me it was too entrenched in the first person; I tend to be that way anyway. I really appreciated the talent that went into this book. It is as though you got to observe your favorite professor's best journal entries.
August 7, 2017
I hate the story and suffering, but could never stop reading it after I started. Wouldn't recommend to people who want to be happy, but if you want to be miserable, please go ahead
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September 15, 2018Another fine novel in the Mary Russel and Sherlock Holmes series.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews