Barter Island [Paperback]

Peter Scott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2007

In this sequel to Peter Scott's first novel, Something in the Water, islanders face another invasion, this one by refugees from the turbulent social upheavals of the late 1960s. In this book, hippies, Vietnam veterans, and back-to-the-landers bring with them beliefs and behaviors that seem to threaten the traditional island ways and outrage the islanders' sense of right and wrong.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Down East Books (April 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089272739X
• ISBN-13: 978-0892727391
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,196,326 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Scott is the author of one history and three novels (a fourth recently
completed), including the 2007 published Barter Island (Down East
Books), which has been praised by legendary fiction writer Tim OʼBrien as
"tender, funny, sad and scary, and boy oh boy does Scott nail the setting".
The Boy who Came Walking Home and Something in the Water, which
the Boston Globe called "A thoroughly engaging novel", are prequels to
Barter Island, and all of them deal with themes of war and peace. A
veteran of the Vietnam War as a U.S. Army Officer, Peter was raised in
Maryland. He earned his M.A. in 1973, and has published 15 short stories
and numerous magazine articles. An English teacher at Hawken School,
Peter lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Banger from Maine, April 1, 2008

By 

Reader 2126 "Reader 2126" (Midwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barter Island (Paperback)

A "banger" is compositor's slang for an exclamation point, and I must exclaim, after just finishing BARTER ISLAND, that author Peter Scott banged this book. I inserted an exclamation point onto the verso of the back cover before I closed it. It was that good.

Don't believe I have ever read such exquisite character development in fiction, and I've read a gazillion books, at last count. This book was all about the people, and these particular people were all about life in America.

I became afraid, before the ending, that the author would let me down by failing to fict a climax into the fiction, that he would be true to life and would abandon the characters as normal as in real life, in which most conundrums are never resolved. Yet in the ending I was pleased, satisfied, climaxed, yet empowered to wonder even more, especially to wonder whether war veterans are heroes or victims or cowards or more in war and afterlife, as most warriors, I can only suppose, must wonder long after warring. And to wonder about whether love will be requited, as we ~should~ wonder, wonder if her scent will sail him back into nurse again.

The book moves so well in the present tense!

The language was real poetry. A song of the Northeast. Lyrical. I really enjoy reading the writing of an author who glories in the composition, the punctuation, the phrasing, the updiagramming of the sentence to put it all into place for the reader, into sequence for the reader's breathing while reading. Each page was loaded with provocative thoughts, the thoughts that make moments of life more than steps in time: the creative comparisons, the unlikely insight, the notice. This is imaginative storytelling and fulfilling reading.

I would complain that there was too much drinking. Maybe the characters did, but is it important enough to tell so often? Later I found myself thankful that the author was true to the prevalence of alcohol as a potion to calm the rough waters of war veterans' memories.

Now, multiply all the above comments by a thousand to the positive. I will think about these characters for a long time, and now I can truly imagine life on the Maine islands, where the sea serves as a moat against convention, even though it is always breached, and the tide brings semidiurnal promise of safe haven. I was enthralled by this book.