Book Review: “The Island Child” by Molly Aitken

Inis, a rocky spit of land off the coast of Ireland

, is a place frozen in time, where

the men brave the sea to feed their families and the women cook their fish and weave their tales at home. This is the island where Oona was born, and which she longs to leave; “The Island Child” tells the story of her escape and her return.

The novel’s plot, beautiful and entrancing in its bareness, is modelled in part on the Greek myth of Demeter and Kore. Indeed, the only minor sin of the book is perhaps that of putting its mythical bones on show too clearly, through the snippets of legend that interrupt the flow of Oona’s narration (sometimes, I thought, unnecessarily). I believe Aitken’s exquisite use of time, leading the story towards a perfectly balanced centre, would have been enough to reveal the archetypal shadows cast by her characters. Yet, this may be due to with my personal love-hate relationship with mythical allusions (one of the professional hazards of being a classicist). Undeniably, these scraps of legend, drawing on other versions of the story and on the author’s fertile imagination, guide the reader through the more immaterial aspects of Oona’s journey, illuminating motifs and characters.

The latter are all profoundly real and compelling: wild Felim with his unsurmountable anger, Enda, so caring and irremediably alone, Pat who needs Oona almost inexplicably … But the “Island Child” is really about its women, starting with Oona. Through her eyes we are let into a world of mothers, like Aislinn, fighting for her children and against the prejudices of the islanders, and Mary, too bundled in her own solitude to understand that of her daughter. At the same time, this world belongs to daughters like Oona, their fear and desire to leave home so similar to the desire and fear of becoming mothers in their turn, to escape the past and find that they keep running back into it.

Full of lore and feeling, “The Island Child” is an unmissable read for anyone who loves mythical atmospheres and great storytelling. As a big fan of both, I can’t wait to read all of author Molly Aitken’s future work.