The Island

One critic described The Island as “An unflinching thriller that braids past and present, good and evil, love and loss”, which is a pretty fair summary of the novel. The storytelling itself is clever but complicated, so you need to pay attention to pick up all the different threads.

The book opens with a short Prologue chapter: a couple living in a suburb of Reykjavik ask a neighbour’s daughter to babysit their 7-year-old daughter for an evening. The child has always enjoyed her evenings with this 21-year-old but this particular evening, after they get home and the babysitter has left, their daughter seems strangely upset and doesn’t want to go to bed. The parents are anxious and ask whether the babysitter has been kind to her, and she replies “yes, they both were”, but when the father asks if someone else was there as well, she says: “no, but it was weird.” This strand of the story is then not mentioned again until nearly the end of the book, but is an important element in the denouement.

Next, we read about two young people, in 1987, leaving Reykjavik and taking a very long drive to an extremely remote summer hut where they are to spend the night/weekend, having told no one they are going there. The young man, Benedikt, has just become extremely attracted to the young girl, Katla, whose family own the hut, and they are together for the first time.

Fast forward ten years and now four 30-year-olds meet up to spend a weekend on a very remote, uninhabited island. The four were once really good friends, but gradually the reader discovers that ten years earlier another of the group – Katla – had been murdered. Her body had been found at the summer hut by her father and he was accused of the crime, a key piece of evidence being the statement of a local policeman. Despite proclaiming his innocence, Katla’s father had been convicted and later committed suicide in prison.

When tragedy strikes the group on the island the police send Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir to investigate. Doggedly, she interviews the young people over and over again, pulling out inconsistencies in their statements to build insights into their past and reveal links between the historic murder and the current events on the island.

My verdict
Probably the first thing to mention is that Ragnar Jónasson paints such a vivid picture of terrain and scenery that I became immersed in this unfamiliar territory as the drama unfolded and felt I’d been transported to Iceland. It added a whole extra layer to my enjoyment of this novel.

I also found Detective Hulda a great character. She’s portrayed as an isolated, sad person and a workaholic, and it’s only as the story progresses that you get glimpses of her past and the barriers she faces at work. You witness her tenacity and determination as she gradually uncovers the untruths and evasions of the young people and their families, and you really want her to succeed with her investigation.

Spanning ten years, the plot of this novel is complex and Jónasson builds the tension really well. And because there’s little forensic evidence to work with, solving the mystery depends on Hulda’s abilities to dig into the past and weed out the truth. I did sometimes find the narrative a bit clunky, but I’m not sure whether that was due to the translation. Whatever the case it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this very clever story and, as I said earlier, I’m hoping now to read Books 1 and 3 of the trilogy to get the full picture. I’d definitely recommend The Island – either to read, or listen to – and give it 4 Stars.
Review by: Silent Witness

(At Oundle Crime, 4 Stars = A good book with an interesting, layered story that you will still remember after a month.)

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