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2004 Man Booker Prize Longlist
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The Island Walkers Information and Book Review (continued)
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TurboBookSnob Review (continued) |
Alf, the father, struggles between his desire for a promotion at the knitting factory and his loyalty to his friends and fellow workers. As the factory owners seek aggressively to stomp out a budding labor union, one executive tries to recruit Alf to management's side with the promise of a promotion if Alf reports on union activities and provides the names of the sympathizers. Alf is required to choose between securing his promotion to satisfy his disappointed wife, or stand by his friends regardless of the sacrifices that his loyalty endangers.
Margaret, Alf's wife, strives to maintain a brittle facade of a proper middle-class home, working with brute force and sheer determination to overcome what she perceives is a lazy husband, an unsatisfactory house in the wrong part of town, and children who, while a credit to their parents in some respects, are nevertheless condemned to a social status that seems unlikely to ever improve. Margaret is acutely aware of her social betters in town, and quietly regrets her fate, much as she loves her husband and her children.
Joe is in high school, a handsome and intelligent young man pinning the hopes of his life solely on a college education - until Anna Macrimmon sweeps into town, into his classroom, and into his heart. Anna is a cultured and experienced young woman who is instantly admitted to all of the right social circles. Joe may be the only boy in her class who can meet her on an intellectual level, understanding the poetic intensity she is yearning for in her life. It is Brad, however, the rubber-stamped approved catch who wins her romantic loyalty, while Joe must settle for hovering around the periphery of her life, called upon when Anna needs intellectual stimulation or an empathetic artistic viewpoint.
The younger Walker children deal with social conflict on the playground. Penny, a recently diagnosed diabetic, is prepared to risk her health to avoid ridicule from the popular girls in her class. She would prefer to crush her prescribed biscuit in the bottom of her boot, rather than risk being perceived different by her peers. Jamie befriends a young, scruffy boy from his class who, according to his mother, hails from the wrong side of the tracks. She forbids Jamie to play with Billy, and he must engage in subterfuge in order to play with Billy after school and even to teach him to read.
These individual battles are waged in the larger landscape and social climate of the town, stretched to its breaking point as the battle between the factory workers and owners grows increasingly more heated, eventually becoming a bubbling, fiery, unpredictable undercurrent that threatens to explode at any minute. John Bemrose's first novel perfectly illustrates the genius behind the Man Booker Prize judging system. In addition to publishers submitting selected novels, the judges can also call in books they deem worthy. This practice provides a level playing field for small publishing houses and first-time novelists. In addition, the judges change yearly, preventing the prize from being awarded year after year to the "usual suspects" while potentially ignoring deserving new talent.
Clare Morrall's Astonishing Splashes of Colour is a good success story for the Booker judging system. This novel wasn't on anyone's radar screen until it made the Booker longlist and subsequently the shortlist in 2003. The publishers weren't expecting to print a large run, but with the inclusion of Clare's novel on the Booker list, that became a different story.
The TurboBookSnob would never have found The Island Walkers on her own, but she is grateful to this year's Booker Prize judges for recognizing this book in a year when there were so many releases from some of the top names in literature. This book felt like an unexpected windfall, a pleasure that was devoured eagerly in one sitting.
The Island Walkers is not a perfect novel (but then, what is?), but it is a novel that satisfies, and quite simply, just "works" in the way that novels are supposed to. Bemrose's characters are so well-drawn and sympathetic that the reader instantly identifies with them and genuinely cares about their fates. His narrative, once he gets into his rhythm, pulls the reader along with an elegant intensity. Bemrose has a knack of painting vivid visual pictures that draw on basic human universal truths and the common insignificant little events that we all share. The reader can't help but identify with his descriptions, nodding her head in recognition and affirmation, thinking "I've seen that," or "I've experienced that."
The only flaw the TurboBookSnob discovered with The Island Walkers is the languid pace, seemingly, that Bembrose takes in the prologue and first chapter, paying what seems like excessive attention to building the landscape of Attawan before introducing the characters and the story. The pleasures that can be derived from this novel excuse the slow start.
The Island Walkers deserves its spot on the Booker longlist, and from the longlisted books the TurboBookSnob has read so far, perhaps a spot on the coveted shortlist as well. More important than any prize status, The Island Walkers is a book that deserves to be read, and re-read, and shared with others. |
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