Island [Import] [Hardcover]

Jane Rogers (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown, London (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316851531
• ISBN-13: 978-0316851534
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lyrical page turner, January 6, 2001

By 

Eric L. Garner (Riverside, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Island (Hardcover)

I have seen this book ranked as of the ten best fiction books of 2000, and it certainly deserves it. I had not read Jane Rogers before, but here she proves that beautiful writing and easy, gripping reading can comfortably coexist. The story centers on a young woman given up for adoption at birth who has spent her life moving from one foster home to another. In the first sentence of the book she announces that she is going to find and kill her birth mother. She tracks her birth mother to an island off the Scottish coast, which proves to be a barren and windswept place of magic and fairy tales. Although the end is revealed in the prologue, this makes the book no less suspenseful and Rogers narration from inside the mind of the troubled protagonist is masterful. This is a hard book to put down and well worth reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life as a Grimm's Fair yTale, December 3, 2005

By 

Rosemarie Murray "ufo2" (Long Pond, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Island (Paperback)

The central theme of this terrific book is the archetype of the abandoned child and what a winding path we must find through the wood with no mother to guide us. Danger, betrayal, death and love: a good fairy tale for adults.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Quite a Disappointment, February 23, 2001

By 

Kimberly Hartzfeld (Plymouth, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Island (Hardcover)

Based on what I had read about it, I had high expectations for this book, but I struggled to finish this book and only did so because I was so far into it. I was disappointed with the character development and thought the writing style left a little to be desired. The stream of consciousness sentences which changed topic mid-stream were distracting to me, and I often had to read parts over and over again to get an understanding of what was being said. I found the characters to have great potential but overall to be underdeveloped. I especially thought that she could have done more with the relationships of both children with the mother. I didn't mind knowing the ending from the first page, but when I got to the ending, I felt that I didn't know much more than when I started. I was disappointed.