The Islanders - Pascal Garnier

 THE ISLANDERS - PASCAL GARNIER

I should by now have learnt my lesson and know not to be swayed into buying and reading a book based on the blurbs on the cover but what can you do? I'm a sucker for this stuff and though a hardened cynic when quotes from reviews are used to sell something, my defenses sometimes fall and in I go. In for a penny, in for a pound.

The Islanders by Pascal Garnier and no, I've never heard of him either but apparently he's the prize-winning author of more than sixty books and a once leading figure in contemporary French literature. Born in Paris in 1949 and died in 2010.

According to the Sunday Times, The Islanders is 'A dark, richly odd and disconcerting world... devastating and brilliant'. According to the Financial Times, it's 'A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard'. Well, that did it. I was going to have to read it now.

Like in a Robert Altman movie, the main characters are introduced one by one and we see how their lives are either already entwined or become entwined. There's Olivier, whose mother has recently passed away and he's travelling to Versailles for her funeral and to sort out her estate. There's Roland, a young homeless man. And there's brother and sister Jeanne and Rodolphe who share an apartment together. Rodolphe is blind and Jeanne looks after him. When their lives collide, tragedy unfolds and murder is the game both past and present.

Beyond this, it's hard to say too much about the plot as it would give too much away. Too many spoilers spoil the broth, you might say? If, however, you like your noir as cold as a new razor blade then Pascal Garnier's your man. Cynicism, fatalism, moral ambiguity, it's all here.

I'd say there are echoes here too of Jean Cocteau's 'Les Enfants Terribles' and Gilbert Adair's 'The Dreamers' (perhaps more widely known by Bernardo Bertolucci's film version of it starring Eva Green?). It's in the way that civilization breaks down within four walls of a house and how another world is born bearing very little resemblance to what has gone before.

Pascal Garnier's The Islanders is a book of interest. Whilst not really on the same level as Camus or Ballard, it's still a good read. Noteworthy, might be a better way of putting it? A significant player.

John Serpico