Island

Konrad (known as Rad) and his twin brother Key live in a crumbling house on a ravine. Their mother was killed in a freak accident about a decade earlier. When Rad, 17, arrives home from school one day, his father is dead at the bottom of the ravine. His brother Key is in shock, afraid that he might have killed their father. What happened? This dark, dramatic mystery sets up a gothic fever dream narrative which takes place in memory and in a liminal mental space occupied by Rad but shared with Key.

The truth is shocking. Initially, Rad looks back to a happy childhood when their family engaged in epic juggling sessions, pumpkin pie eating contests and a time they walked backwards for a mile. They were whimsical and carefree. But even before the death of their mother, the family was threatened by their father’s erratic behaviour which later spiraled into depression, rage and psychosis. Both boys have suffered neglect and some physical abuse. Rather than seek help, the twins tried to manage the situation, working to support the family and fix up their deteriorating house. The end is in sight for them when they will finish high school and leave home. Their father builds a platform overlooking the ravine, a place where he spends his time talking to the ghost of his wife. As the boys untangle their own story, Key is able to remember the events of the afternoon and realize that he is not responsible for their father’s death. The two end their conversation hollowed out by their tragedy but ready to try to move forward.

Island is about the challenges of the world – growing up with a parent who is mentally ill – but it is more situated in the territory of the mind. It is an interior story about feelings, an emotional mystery. While the story is meant to be believed, I found it more allegorical than literal. The boys live on the edge of a forest in a strange home, very much like the setting of a fairytale. The story includes ghosts. YA is often heightened, but Island falls just short of successfully fusing the supernatural with realism. Perhaps some of the gleeful, grim humour of traditional fairytales would have been beneficial, but the tone is fairly solemn.

Rad has a lot of reasons to be sad, but, besides the wreckage of his home life, the main source of his trauma is the failure of his relationship with his girlfriend, Jacqui. Why does Downes feel the need to make Jacqui a model with luminous skin who is heading for the Ivy League? This idealization of pure womanhood is indicative of the extremely male perspective of the book. Rad follows his every dark emotion, wallows in his tragedies. The drama and the romance of his first kiss is shared: “We kissed, and for a moment I felt like I was becoming an island, a high island, a true island made of lava. An undersea volcano gave me up to the oceans and the waves, and I broke through to the air. I was hotter than I’d ever been, and cool. Steam and rock. Molten and solid.” Rad is obsessed with islands, their solitude and grandeur, but though this theme is developed through the book, I found its contribution to the overall narrative to be negligible. Much of the writing is admirable as is the attempt to inhabit raw teen emotions, but, at times, the overall mood is too dark and tormented.

Some readers may appreciate the serious literary aspirations of this book although young adults looking for sophisticated books have much to choose from, including classic novels and other books written originally for adults. Island lacks a traditional plot though there is coherence and chronology to its structure. It is a slight novel, one that meanders through a mental landscape from one dark thought to the next. Downes covers a lot of emotional territory in such a short book, and the story retains a flow and lightness of structure- it does not feel laboured or dense.

It is perhaps overdramatic that Rad and Key’s mother was killed by a rogue tire flying off a dump truck. However, this can be seen as a metaphor in that every disaster in life, including those much smaller than the ones that afflict Rad, can feel like a rogue tire, a bizarre misfortune that comes from nowhere. In contrast, the sections which deal with the boys’ father, though also metaphorical and dreamy at times, feel urgent and particular. The trauma of being abandoned and having to learn to fend for one’s self is conjured commendably.

Island is best understood in relation to the emo genre of music, an aesthetic which appeals equally to a male and female audience though the creators are overwhelmingly male. The features which define emo are an obsession with loneliness, a tendency to wallow in sadness and negative emotions, and the difficulty of finding and holding on to love. The way Rad obsesses over and idealizes Jacqui’s beauty and perfection is, again, typical. Emo is teen angst in the extreme, and Island translates regular angst into insanity, fear, loss and heartbreak. I found Rad, the tortured, brilliant, haunted hero to be too melodramatic and over the top. But, because this aesthetic certainly appeals to a lot of teens and is not overly-represented in literature, there is likely a cult audience for Island.