One of the best bits about doing this kind of blog is that it opens you up to books you would probably never have tried and authors you might otherwise have overlooked. Step forward Catherine Cooper, whose The Island confounded me by providing a fresh twist to some literary devices that can often leave me cold. Perhaps it was the glamour of the settings, the aristocracy of some of the characters and the hypocrisy of their actions that kept me hooked. Or was it that I was enjoying too much looking through my fingers at the bitchy snobbery at play, the arrogant and ignorant entitlement on show, and the horrible conceits (disguised as sophistication) that old money play on new, and both play on the poor? No. When it comes down to it, this is a cool story of revenge served cold in the most incongruous circumstances. Who can resist? (Spoiler: not me.)

There are two plot lines: a tale of teenage indiscretion from 1990, and the unfolding of consequences in the present day. Normally I find this dual narrative annoying and self-indulgent on behalf of an author: it puts a barrier between reader and writer and serves only to remind us that the author has both characters and readers dancing to their tune. Here, though, both storylines are so compelling that you can’t wait to have both move along. The action takes place on one night (and its aftermath) and a few days respectively. Most characters behave appallingly. On ‘the island’, the result is that you just can’t wait for the body count to mount as we’ve been told (promised?) that it will. You’ll work out who’s doing it all, then you’ll discard the truth in favour of a red herring. Everyone’s a suspect and nothing is what it seems at all.

That ambiguity is what drives the novel’s great themes, especially those relating to class. The premise of the whole tale is that there are twins, Henry and Ophelia, who are running an island resort in the Maldives. This resort is ridiculously high end. The consumption and luxury are utterly wasteful, but sold as ethical and sustainable. There’s a press visit, on which selected influencers soak it all up and feed it through their filters to Insta, or various travel titles. But thirty years ago Henry and Ophelia ran hedonistic parties for underage rich kids, and one of them had catastrophic consequences for a number of people.

Warning: spoilers beyond this point

But since then Henry and a couple of others have managed to reinvent themselves: ‘Xander’ becomes ‘Alex’, for example. 

Actually, Xander/Alex is one of the more interesting characters. While Henry and Ophelia’s tyrannical father ensures that their family’s reputation is kept intact despite the twins’ propensity for scandal, Henry never really achieves happiness and Ophelia finds bitterness in her cruelty. They cannot be free, but they are none the less a unit. The other main characters (who I won’t name here) are equally united. Xander/Alex is cut adrift by the twins and blamed by the others for things he may not have done. I am not sure that he deserves our sympathy, but at least part of his ‘crime’ seems to be that he isn’t sure which world he wants to be part of, and at the age of 17 that seems not unreasonable or at least not unusual.

Pacy, enjoyable and sometimes shocking, The Island promises a world away. But the world it presents, of terrible human beings being calculating on one hand and neglectful on the other, feels incredibly close to home. What a trip.

Thanks to HarperCollins for the review copy and to Anne Cater for the blog tour invitation.