Top 10 novels about things that go horribly wrong on islands

I’ve lived and worked on islands and I’ve holidayed on islands and nothing (terribly) sinister has ever befallen me. That’s because, of course, in reality islands are often very nice.

But mostrar mais novelists are not very nice, and fictional islands are pressure cookers, the smaller the hotter. It doesn’t matter if the island in question is lush and tropical or a hunk of rock in an Austrian lake. When there’s nowhere to go but the shore and back and the shore and back, everything is familiar and familiarity breeds resentment. Confrontation – with oneself, neighbours, history, the most sinister offerings of society – becomes impossible to avoid.

Visitors don’t help. Even when they’re not actively causing harm, the most benign tourists carry with them their dreams of the ideal, untroubled life they’d lead if they were lucky enough to live surrounded by water. If you’re a fictional islander, each influx of tourists compounds your claustrophobia.

And if you’re the visitor? That’s also not great. You either end up contemplating the gulf between your dream and reality or – and this is when things really go off the deep end – embracing delusion and living deliriously removed from the mainland of reality.

Below is a list of what might be termed “beach reads”, although they may make you reconsider ever spending time on a beach again.

Rebecca Rukeyser – LT author page mostrar menos