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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Silence Can Be Lovely, February 16, 2003
Martin Booth's "Islands of Silence" is a very good read and an interesting love story. This novel tells the story of Alec Marquard, an aged, self-imposed mute and veteran of WWI who's winding down his days in a mental institution. It's told in first person narrative (with Alec as narrator) with chapters alternating between the present and past. Booth's writing is vivid and his pace perfect for the story as Alec's condition and the mystery of what caused it are patiently revealed through Alec's memories and thoughts. The story begins in a mental ward where Alec has been a patient for a very long time. He's in possession of his faculties, but has eschewed speech for many years and as the story progresses the reader begins to understand Alec's motivation for this silence. We're given glimpses of his childhood and the memory-portion of the story really takes off when Alec puts his archaelogical degree to work investigating brochs off the Scottish coast. When researching ruins on an island off the coast, he sees a beautiful and mysterious young woman (note: I would not characterize her as otherworldly, she is very much human flesh) who is incapable of speech--although she is able to make sounds. Alec is mesmerized and eventually is able to meet and spend some time with her in an almost intimate setting. She allows him to make sketchings of her and there's even some minor physical contact. In spite of her inability to speak any language, she and Alec communicate during their brief time together and Alec either falls in love with her or becomes infatuated (the reader can be the judge). I found this part of the novel a bit of a stretch, but Alec is young at the time and the woman is very beautiful, so who knows? It is about this time that WWI is starting to heat up and pacifist Alec is incarcerated for his refusal to serve in the military (his military step-father is behind the charges) and taken from the coast and his incipient romance. After multiple beatings and several months in prison, Alec is offered a release if he's willing to serve in the miltary with the medical corps. This section of the book is particularly riveting and revealing. Booth's depiction of the March 1915 naval assault on Dardennelles, Gallipoli is so well-rendered that the reader is almost transported to the beach (much like the opening scene on Normandy in the film 'Saving Private Ryan') and the horrible scenes and thoughts that follow. Alec shares his thoughts prior, during, and immediately after the assault and Booth provides the reader little chance to catch his or her breath. It's gripping stuff and brings the book much closer to its conclusion. All in all, the writing is wonderully vivid and the alternating past/present chapters works very well in the context of the novel. I found the love story to be central to the story, but also a little difficult to buy into. I particularly enjoyed the war writing and the present day musings of Alec and how the author tied everything together. Part mystery, part war-novel, and major part love story, this is a very good read and one that's recommended.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Love and loss, February 24, 2003
Alec Marquand never speaks. He never willingly communicates with another person. He is very old now, close to the end of his life, and incarcerated in a mental hospital. But it wasn't always like this. Once he was a young man, an archaeologist fresh out of college mapping the Stone Age in Scotland, and there, on the remote and much feared Island of Silence, he discovered a secret destined to haunt him the rest of his life -- a beautiful girl. Given time, their strange and fleeting relationship might have blossomed into something more, who knows? He never got to find out. WWI took him away, spit him out on a totally different sort of island under a rain of bullets, and baptized him in a carnage too horrible to remember. He has not spoken since, but he has never forgotten the girl. Written from Alec's point of view in chapters alternating between his adventures as a young man and his life now as an old one, ISLANDS OF SILENCE is a strangely haunting novel. Although I found it slow going and in places was bored to the point of skipping whole paragraphs that seemingly had little to do with the plot, the prose was poetic, the details singularly perfect, and I worked my way through to the last page and was rewarded by an end satisfyingly appropriate for a story as mystical and sad as this one. Martin Booth has created here a horrific portrait of war, painting the devastation in chapters I will not soon forget. It would be hard to call ISLANDS OF SILENCE a love story; equally difficult to consider it a coming-of-age novel. Rather, it is a beautifully if sluggishly written account of one man's attempts to come to grips with a world that has hurt him too much. Readers who enjoy complex, mystical tales of love and loss will most likely find ISLANDS OF SILENCE a brilliant addition to their collection.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mixture., November 23, 2003
Scarred by one experience in World War I, Alec Marquand has had a mental breakdown and will not communicate with others, although he is sometimes tempted. He is an old man now, and the novel is told in a series of flashbacks, as well is in the present tense. The flashbacks are to the War, but also to an earlier time when Alec worked on an archeological investigation in northern Scotland, and comes across a mute young woman who was raised on a remote island without ever being spoken to, as part of a mad experiment. She represents innocence, and Alec becomes infatuated. While I found the novel quite readable - Booth is a good story teller - the War scenes are not exceptional, and the best part of the earlier flashbacks is the depiction of how Alec sets about his archeological work. On the other hand, the thought processes of the old man, his interactions with staff, and most of all his appreciation of the garden in which his asylum is set, are wonderful.
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