Skyland

by Andrew Durbin

On the Greek island of Patmos, where St. John received the Book of Revelation, two writers find themselves mired in an uneasy sense of timelessness, where history and the present jumble together. As they hunt for a lost portrait of the iconic gay novelist Hervé Guibert, they discover that the island’s insistent isolation from the global catastrophe surrounding it, from the refugees interned on nearby Samos to the fascist rise in Europe and the United States, is more pose than reality.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, Travel, Collections, LGBT, Contemporary

112 pages, Paperback

First published July 7, 2020

About the author

Andrew Durbin is the author of MacArthur Park (2017) and Skyland (2020), both from Nightboat Books. In 2018, MacArthur Park was a finalist for the Believer Book Award. His book about Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, The Wonderful World that Almost Was, is forthcoming from FSG and Granta in April 2026. He is the editor of Jacolby Satterwhite’s How lovely is me being as I am (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2021), Kevin Killian’s Fascination: Memoirs (Semiotexte, 2018), and the chapbook series Say bye to reason and hi to everything (Capricious, 2015). His fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in The Believer, BOMB, Boston Review, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Paris Review, Triple Canopy, and elsewhere. He lives in London and is the editor-in-chief of frieze magazine.

Reviews

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skyland is a quick novella about searching for one thing and finding another.

Andrew, author and narrator, is in a relationship in Brooklyn that he is only beginning to settle into when he gets the opportunity to travel to Patmos, a Greek island off the coast of Turkey, to potentially lay eyes on a mythical portrait of French writer Herve Guibert. Once on the island, accompanied by his friend Shiv, he has the opportunity to have an Herve-esque time of his own, reflecting on relationships, male bodies, sex, and foreignness. In searching for the lost painting he discovers bits of himself in the supposed subject.

This book is a quick read without too much of a point, but the purpose is light and the writing well-done. Summer is here: take this little book to the beach and pretend you're in Greece with Andrew Durbin.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely novella and a perfect summer read. One review I read seemed to suggest it would be a scattered series of fragments, but I found it tightly structured and really appreciated how the singular focus on finding a maybe-nonexistent painting of Herve Guibert allowed for rich detail and asides along the way. I also loved Durbin's MacArthur Park, which had a meandering focus more akin to other autofictional exercises. But this felt both more traditional (like Death in Venice if the boy were a painting) and also fresher, taking poetical autofiction in a new direction. Durbin has a great way of creating a sensual mood. Desire is the climate, not just something tied specifically to sex scenes or romance. I breezed through this on a lazy afternoon, pausing to search for pictures of the Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos, and Herve Guibert. It was a great way to feel connected with the world even as I won't be able to go to the Greek islands/anywhere anytime soon.

[Macartney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a small, tight piece of cross stitch: simple in scope, obsessively detailed, oozing complicated ease. Also: sexy, smart, haunting and so, so summery.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfect summery novella!

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The sea shushed rhythmically against the side of the boat as we slowed. It had a voice, and it didn't. Shiv was still bothered by the looks the other passengers had given us when we boarded, but I'd already forgotten them—they were melded with the centuries as one transhistorical face."

An irresistible novella of seductive prose, tense with desire, eroticism, death. I miss traveling so this book really managed to stroke that tender nostalgia for going far away and losing oneself.

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skyland is structured as a series of fragmentary entries taken from the author's diary, a little like Instagram snapshots, where all is not quite as it appears. They tells of a fairly uneventful trip to the Greek island of Patmos taken by two friends. They are in search of a hypothetical painting of French author Hervé Guibert by Yannis Tsarouchis. The novella, a piece of autofiction, a genre of which Guibert was a zealous proponent himself, could easily crumble under the weight of the monotony it depicts and lose momentum. But the heroes' quest does keep the narrative going until the end.

Greece (and the past) is presented as a non-space, seemingly cut off from the world thanks to its lack of proper internet access, filled only by inertia and a vague sense of dread. Meanwhile, back in the US, the sun is eclipsed and fascists kill people in the streets with the approval of the President.

But sun-stunned Greece is not the benign refuge Durbin, with his elegant and smooth observations, is leading the reader to think it is. Below the polished surface of a languid summer holiday, the book is infused with a vague sense of malaise, and the “outside” world, marching history and just plain meanness are at work there too, as we are reminded when Shiv is taken for an illegal migrant simply because of his skin colour.

Durbin himself is quite careless and, as a character observes, not “nice”, not least with his boyfriend back at home, but even with his hook-up, or with his friend, Shiv, whose experience of racism is he seems to dismiss and belittle, while also arguably resenting his sex-positive attitude.

Guibert was a transgressive author and man, so it is not a little ironic that Durbin, in the end, should be so bourgeois and conservative in his outlook. He remarks on and criticizes the conservative attitudes of the autochtones, but renounces his only chance at transgression: nudity. Something he can’t explain himself.

The ending is as anti-climactic as it could be. In literature, a journey usually allows the protagonist to grow, learn something about himself or about the world but the author/narrator, together with the reader, ends up stranded on an emptying beach at the fag-end of the holiday season, not even gone full circle to New York, where the book begins.

Ultimately nothing really happens in the book and, despite Durbin’s protestations to the contrary (“This isn’t quite the grand, unfurling cliché of travel—‘what matters is the journey, not the destination’—since all I want is a destination, an end point. No cheap Norwegian Air flight matters more than its arrival city.”), it does feel very much like it is the journey that matters here. There is no end point.

Admittedly it is a surprisingly engaging and seductive journey but there is a dark undertone to those lazily sun-drenched pages that can easily be overlooked.

[Zak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skyland is a brilliant little book. A novella that is seeking an inner truth, to Andrew's own potential for sexual union? To finally reach some conclusion to how he feels, that is easily being mired in his most recent obsession, love and passion of discovering a painting, the final image, of an icon: the portrait of a writer who wrote his death, Herve Guibert?- that you get a sense is just an implemented macguffin, not narratively, but personally for him to get away from the reality back at home.

Searching for something material that isn't going to fill in any hole, inside of himself. Or is it all just an excuse to lounge in beaches of the Greek Island, Patmos to pontificate, ponder, drink, dining on feta and Greek salad, stalling the inevitable?

Is it to get away from his lover, partner, someone somebody could be easily assigned as a boyfriend, but he isn't allowing himself to be available to, as its too emotionally anchoring for Andrew?

Is Andrew stalling whilst on the Island? - because of his old friend/travel companion, having sexual trysts and personal excursions off on his own, and holding him up? Or is out of fear he will not actually find what he has so put of himself into, by seeking this much mythologised painting and thing? Only to be disappointed?

For such a short book, a lot is left to be both desired and picked upon, as these underlying themes, motives are not the true essence to his ultimate and actual wants, that are as elusive as the painting he seeks; and the supposed truth, which is, is there any truth to seek? - behind a painting of an author he so upholds and has a deep passion for.

Herve Guibert is just a starting point. So, what lies deep in this book is an exposure of an emotional self, of a person supposedly or usually deeply locked off from emotion, where sex is sex, and intimacy is almost an aberration.

Impressionistic, subtle, sensual, extremely contemplative, the book is partly a dully sonorous travelogue, which is not a criticism, as it allows flourishing of prose and summery atmosphere to be conveyed, transported to us the reader and is also part passionate manifesto of intent, via the means of discovery and journeying across the seas to find a fictional or mythologised painting of Guibert.

A unique singular piece of work that over the 116 pages, in the writing, the ultimate discovery of self, of art, of placement, is more theological than anything else, the overall execution and manner and tonality swooping, than as the concrete uncertainty in the form of the painting, as a piece of art could offer Durbin.

[TNVR · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading Andrew Durbin’s latest novella on a dreary January day, still in lockdown after nearly a year, probably made me more amenable to Skyland than I may otherwise have been. Being cold, lonely, and trapped in the house, this languid little story about a meandering quest to find a painting of Hervé Guibert enveloped me in a kind of lazy, desirous haze that came as a welcome respite. However the boundary between a work in a minor key and a work that is cheap can be a fine one and I’m not sure that Skyland is definitively on the side of the former. The story is set right as Charlottesville has occurred in the U.S. and against the backdrop of what some people call “the European migrant crisis” (Skyland takes place in Greece). Is the most we can ask of a writer to simply acknowledge these events, as if this in itself illuminates something about the relationship of the personal to the political?

[John Sinclair · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a tiny novella about the journey of two men to find a portrait of a writer one admires on the island of Patmos. There’s nothing more to say; the writing is lovely. 2 stars. #books #books2020 #bookstagram #reading #readersofinstagram

[Nikolaj Tange Lange · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great introduction to the life and work of Hervé Guibert, as well as a deeply moving personal tale in its own right. This short novel handles some real heavy issues, and yet it feels unbelievably light which is a true accomplishment.

[⏺ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful 110-page build up to a 5-page very abrupt ending. Brilliant while it lasts, it left me with an intense longing for almost everything that's described, and a blue nostalgia for something I've never experienced. In a way, a lesser version of MacArthur Park, but I think Skyland would've easily surpassed it, in a more fleshed-out version.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know why I had such high hopes for this book, but whatever. I like Herve Guibert, this book feels like an insult to his legacy in the fact that it's so aggressively conventional, like, how are you going to write a fanboy-ish novel about Guibert and resist the urge to do a single thing that might even hint at transgression.

[Cory · Rating 3 out of 5]

A breezy and slight but impassioned elegy to Guibert. At times dragged down by impulsive name-dropping and contrived political commentary, but ultimately buoyed by its summery atmosphere and devotion to its literary subject.

[juch · Rating 3 out of 5]

pleasantly chill and anticlimactic, matter of fact sentences, i liked/identified w how ambivalent the narrator was about his goals

[Evan Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant as always!

[Mark Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing little novella! Very transportive and meditative, and featured some really interesting intertextual techniques, blurring the lines of fiction, auto biography and critique.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
I liked it, it was what I think I wanted from outline, read it for the vibes, great for the waiting room I read this in while at the dentist

[Eilif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh to be young, gay, and summering in Greece.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had no idea Herve Gulbert was a real person, though the author goes into detail about his life I had no idea if that was fictional or not. I was also curious to see what the title "Skyland" referred to.
That was also explained and not at all what I expected.

The book was a sensual delight to read. The warmth of the sun and the Aegean sea, the taste of the food and wine, and the way time seems to lose its meaning and importance. The author's quest for the painting seems to become secondary to his just being there. I was fortunate to visit the Greek islands once, and I can vouch for all of this. The book was a pleasant reminder.