Skein Island by Aliya Whiteley
I would like to thank Lydia from Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – Out Now
Price - £7.99
Skein Island, since 1945 a private refuge for women, lies in turbulent waters twelves miles off the coast of Devon. Visitors are only allowed by invitation from the reclusive Lady Amelia Worthington. Women stay for one week, paying for their stay with a story from their past, a Declaration for the island’s vast library.
Marianne’s invitation arrives shortly before her quiet life at the library is violently interrupted, the aftermath leaving her husband David feeling helpless. Now, just like her mother did seventeen years ago, she must discover what her story is.
Secrets are buried deep on Skein Island. The monsters of Ancient Greece and the atrocities of World War II, heroes and villains with their seers and sidekicks, and the stories of a thousand lifetimes all threaten to break free. But every story needs an ending, whatever the cost.
So, I’m going to guess if you visit my blog that you appreciate the power of stories as much as I do. Stories empower us, warn us, thrill us and echo through the centuries. But we also know stories have a power too – we all see ourselves as the lead in our own narrative and we always try to make any events in our life into a story. Look at the news and see how human interest means we must have a villain, a victim and a hero. Our desire to make a story can entrap us in these roles. In Aliya Whiteley’s fascinating novel Skein Island we get a story comprising itself many stories which are appropriately entangled, and we soon go on an epic quest to find out what is going on and possibly change the world.
Marianne is a librarian who one evening gets an intruder with a knife trying to get her undressed she gets him to leave but the experience leaves her shaken. She receives an invitation to visit Skein Island a remote women only retreat that simply asks in exchange for people living a week away from it all to record their story - a Declaration for reasons unknown. Marianne’s mother went there many years ago but never came back and instead started a new life in Bedfordshire. Marianne’s invitation though does seem to be from the original founder who herself is supposed to be dead. Possibly to get away from it all; or possibly to find out what made her mother change and possibly also to be changed Marianne leaves her nice quiet husband David and visits the island. With her two roommates; a sceptical psychologist and a gung-ho mother who wants to ride motorbikes again they try to get to the heart of the Island and instead are involved in an episode that starts to change the world back to an older way of life.
I’ve reviewed Whiteley’s work before and this is story that as with any other tale from them is never something you can easily predict where it is going. This is going to be a review where I am going to be very circumspect as to what Marianne discovers as it’s not something you’ll see coming. The joy here is finding out what Whiteley is tackling. We have a fairly reserved couple in Marianne and David that find the various events trigger huge changes in their lives. When you read about Marianne’s experience at the library just now did you see her purely as a victim? Where in the story should this leave David? This is where the novel interrogates our desire to make a narrative out of life and impose roles on the ‘players’ within it. For David staying at home with only Marianne’s estranged father guiding him he sees a chance to take control of events and his life changes way beyond anything we would expect based on what we head about him early on. For Marianne we see that the roles a woman is expected to fit within can be limited – is she just a victim; a lover to protect or prize to be won? Can a woman actually have her own agency?
Whiteley weaves strands of the modern story with the events that led to the founding of the island. We see thing from various points of view and its where the definition of truth is elastic and can be challenged. Supernatural events could be at play or is this all a form of PTSD? A secret order to the world we never realised or just random events playing out? Slowly we see the scale of this goes beyond a couple’s trauma goes truly global. How far does our desire for a story go to make us harm ourselves or other people for a cause we believe in or satisfy just their own desires. It’s not a comfortable read and can be quite dreamlike as the story moves back and forth from place to place and decade to decade but this matches the flow of the epics this story is itself in conversation with. Whiteley can go from a trapped domestic arrangement to epic bloody violence very swiftly and it’s never an easy take to see who is at fault here. It soon tackles our innate sexism in a culture and men’s desire to lead and take control.
This is an engrossing troubling and thoughtful read of how people live and work with stories. The secret of Skein Island is one that the unravelling of which is the true delight and then seeing how stories reflect we and trap ourselves. If you like stories that explore stories or the idea of a strange modern mythic quest for truth, then please rush to pick this up and see why Whiteley is now one author I will read anything by as soon as I hear about it.
Bonus features – in this copy we get the bonus novelette The Cold Smoke Declaration where a woman is haunted every morning by a ghost. Unconnected to the main story she too goes to Skein Island to record her declaration and her roommate thinks she knows who the ghost is. It plays with the same ideas of who is the lead in any story and how we all see what we want to see but it also talks about finding a way through life and seeing there can be a way to change and move on. If the main novel is the dark epic, then this is a more hopeful sign that the future can be changed.
