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The Islands by Emily Brugman review – an evocative escape to Australia’s Abrolhos Islands
Set among a community of Finnish fishers in a little-known part of the country, Brugman’s debut is a sensuous blend of social history and imaginative fiction
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcastIslands have always attracted writers and readers as rich fictional microcosms. An island setting can be a paradise, retreat or prison, preserver of wilderness or tradition, test of survival skills. And the global malaise of climate change and Covid-19 may have intensified their allure because, in spite of rising oceans, island novels are springing up all over.
Just by chance, I have read three impressive examples recently: Audrey Magee’s The Colony, about an Irish-speaking island community during the Troubles; Norwegian Lars Mytting’s The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, partly set in Shetland, the Scottish islands where I have family roots; and now The Islands, a debut novel by Australian writer Emily Brugman.
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