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Isle
Two islands. Two women. The year is 1289 and an injured young man washes up on an island of women. He is taken in by a sculptor who sees in him the perfect model for her Christ, although her real masterwork will be a larger-than-life Virgin. But the Church will come to reject this sisterhood of unmarried women on the island, and they are bound to lose their small freedoms. Centuries later, a lieutenant is sent to an island to dispose of unexploded ordnance. As an erstwhile World War ii flight nurse trained to evacuate wounded soldiers, she too has gazed upon, and been haunted by, the bodies of broken young men. For her, a fraught love affair with a local man will ignite, while his teenage daughter looks on. Binding the lives – so different and so similar – of women separated by time and place, Claire Robertson’s Isle is an all-encompassing rumination on privacy, inhibition and female desire, rendered in her masterful prose.
- GenresFiction
292 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 29, 2021
1 person is currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Claire Robertson
28 books20 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Claire Robertson is the author of The Spiral House, winner of the 2014 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and a South African Literary Award, and The Magistrate of Gower. She lives in Simon’s Town.
Claire Robertson is the author of The Spiral House, winner of the 2014 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and a South African Literary Award, and The Magistrate of Gower. She lives in Simon’s Town.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 1, 2022
Isle by Claire Robertson is one of those books that, even after much consideration, I find difficult to pigeonhole. And it's been preying on my mind awhile now, weeks after I have finished it. First off, it was the cover that got me – I admit I'm a sucker for striking covers. But also, in my mission to read more African writers, this was certainly intriguing when I cast an eye over the blurb.
It's not a novel, but rather two novellas that have been glomped together, with the only real connection being that both take place on an island and feature the lives of women – though they are centuries apart.
I – Forth from this Place takes up the bulk of the offering, and is the tale of a community of women living on the Isle of St Katharine. They are not nuns, nor have they sworn an oath of celibacy, but they do live as a community of nuns would – cloistered and independent of the world of men. Yet their Magistra Lutgard is well aware of the fragility of the equilibrium their liminal space inhabits. She is anxious not to agitate the church or nearby community too much – for in her time witch hunts are not uncommon. It doesn't help that one of her women, Mechthild, is restless, striving to be more, do more. Find her own way in the world in a manner that is unconventional for its time.
None of this is helped when a Moorish peddler is rescued from a near-drowning, and serves as a muse for Mechthild in her artistic aspirations. She makes a book of hours, but instead of following conventions, her lifelike representations of the people around her surprise and astound those who are not accustomed to seeing representations of their faces laid down on paper. This act of hers has far-reaching consequences, not only for Mechthild, but for the lives her work touches.
II – Uxo brings us to a post-WWII setting where Lily Kinsella, who is higher-ranking than her fellow officer, John Burge, are tasked to recover or destroy old ordnance. Yet from the start, it is clear that all is not well with Lily, nor her relationship with Burge. Their work takes them to remote places, and it's clear this unbalanced relationship between the two, carries equal parts resentment and reverence on Burge's part in the face of Lily's seeming indifference to him.
Their travels bring them to an unnamed island that serves as a penitentiary, where Lily's interactions with teenage Iris and her prison warden father stir trouble, and eventually bring the issues between Lily and Burge to a head. Part coming-of-age story, part remembering of a shrouded past, this novella offers readers a careful dance between withholding and revealing in a way that exposes the fragility of human lives in all their ugliness and beauty.
Neither of these novellas comes to a head in a way that is satisfying – but then again, it's not for an ending or great denouement that one would read, but rather the savouring of each line of prose that is so exquisitely crafted that it is liquid poetry. And that's all I'll say on the matter. See for yourself.
It's not a novel, but rather two novellas that have been glomped together, with the only real connection being that both take place on an island and feature the lives of women – though they are centuries apart.
I – Forth from this Place takes up the bulk of the offering, and is the tale of a community of women living on the Isle of St Katharine. They are not nuns, nor have they sworn an oath of celibacy, but they do live as a community of nuns would – cloistered and independent of the world of men. Yet their Magistra Lutgard is well aware of the fragility of the equilibrium their liminal space inhabits. She is anxious not to agitate the church or nearby community too much – for in her time witch hunts are not uncommon. It doesn't help that one of her women, Mechthild, is restless, striving to be more, do more. Find her own way in the world in a manner that is unconventional for its time.
None of this is helped when a Moorish peddler is rescued from a near-drowning, and serves as a muse for Mechthild in her artistic aspirations. She makes a book of hours, but instead of following conventions, her lifelike representations of the people around her surprise and astound those who are not accustomed to seeing representations of their faces laid down on paper. This act of hers has far-reaching consequences, not only for Mechthild, but for the lives her work touches.
II – Uxo brings us to a post-WWII setting where Lily Kinsella, who is higher-ranking than her fellow officer, John Burge, are tasked to recover or destroy old ordnance. Yet from the start, it is clear that all is not well with Lily, nor her relationship with Burge. Their work takes them to remote places, and it's clear this unbalanced relationship between the two, carries equal parts resentment and reverence on Burge's part in the face of Lily's seeming indifference to him.
Their travels bring them to an unnamed island that serves as a penitentiary, where Lily's interactions with teenage Iris and her prison warden father stir trouble, and eventually bring the issues between Lily and Burge to a head. Part coming-of-age story, part remembering of a shrouded past, this novella offers readers a careful dance between withholding and revealing in a way that exposes the fragility of human lives in all their ugliness and beauty.
Neither of these novellas comes to a head in a way that is satisfying – but then again, it's not for an ending or great denouement that one would read, but rather the savouring of each line of prose that is so exquisitely crafted that it is liquid poetry. And that's all I'll say on the matter. See for yourself.
May 5, 2021
Okay so I don’t quite know how to describe this book, as it’s not really like anything I’ve read before, (Jim Crace’s work comes closest maybe) but let me try.
Isle by Claire Robertson, is a story in two halves. The first set in 1289, on an island, where women, not quite nuns but not-not nuns, live without men.
I’ve been rooting around in my brain trying to find an accurate way of describing the writing in this first half, but I’ve come up short. And so I’ll have to gratefully borrow from @Louise Temkin on Facebook GBAS who referred to it as ‘indirect language’ which feels the most appropriate to me.
It’s not old English, it’s not dialect, rather it’s prose. No that’s not entirely it either. The words, some familiar, some new (or rather probably very very old), constructed in this way, shouldn’t make sense, but they do. They make all the sense. You read it and wonder how you understand it, but the author’s craft makes it moreish.
A broken man washes up on their shores and Mechthild the sculptor/artist takes him in till he’s repaired. Broken bodies is a theme of the book. What we’re left with after what happens and what we make of it, and how we survive it.
The story twists now centuries later. It’s post war and Sargeant Burge and Lieutenant Kinsella travel far and wide to retrieve Uxo from hidden bunkers. (Unexploded ordnance (UXO), unexploded bombs, and explosive remnants of war - thanks for the rabbit hole, Google.)
EDIT: Taken a bit out here, a) it's a spoiler b) it might not be accurate.
Again I’m going to have to borrow a description from the publishers, cos my words will never do the job:
Binding the lives – so different and so similar – of women separated by time and place, Claire Robertson’s Isle is an all-encompassing rumination on privacy, inhibition and female desire, rendered in her masterful prose.
This is a very memorable book. I loved it.
And the cover - strange at first, spectacular at a closer look.
Isle by Claire Robertson, is a story in two halves. The first set in 1289, on an island, where women, not quite nuns but not-not nuns, live without men.
I’ve been rooting around in my brain trying to find an accurate way of describing the writing in this first half, but I’ve come up short. And so I’ll have to gratefully borrow from @Louise Temkin on Facebook GBAS who referred to it as ‘indirect language’ which feels the most appropriate to me.
It’s not old English, it’s not dialect, rather it’s prose. No that’s not entirely it either. The words, some familiar, some new (or rather probably very very old), constructed in this way, shouldn’t make sense, but they do. They make all the sense. You read it and wonder how you understand it, but the author’s craft makes it moreish.
A broken man washes up on their shores and Mechthild the sculptor/artist takes him in till he’s repaired. Broken bodies is a theme of the book. What we’re left with after what happens and what we make of it, and how we survive it.
The story twists now centuries later. It’s post war and Sargeant Burge and Lieutenant Kinsella travel far and wide to retrieve Uxo from hidden bunkers. (Unexploded ordnance (UXO), unexploded bombs, and explosive remnants of war - thanks for the rabbit hole, Google.)
EDIT: Taken a bit out here, a) it's a spoiler b) it might not be accurate.
Again I’m going to have to borrow a description from the publishers, cos my words will never do the job:
Binding the lives – so different and so similar – of women separated by time and place, Claire Robertson’s Isle is an all-encompassing rumination on privacy, inhibition and female desire, rendered in her masterful prose.
This is a very memorable book. I loved it.
And the cover - strange at first, spectacular at a closer look.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews