The Island Child

Starred review from May 4, 2020
Aitken brings myth and folklore to bear in her haunting debut, a chronicle of troubled mothers and daughters set in the late 20th century. Like generations of women before her on the fictional Irish island of Inis, Oona is reared for domesticity and motherhood. As a teenager, she envies her brothers’ freedoms and is fascinated by Aislinn, a free-spirited young widow who dares to suggest women can control their own reproductive futures. Oona dreams of escape, and eventually seizes her opportunity. Years later, when her own young adult daughter disappears, Oona returns to the bleak and treeless island of her youth, where she must contend with secrets that still lie buried. Though set in the recent past in parallel chronologies, Aitken’s tale feels outside of time. The primitive nature of life on Inis reinforces the mood, as does the inclusion of folk- and fairy tale–vignettes set between chapters. Bearing overtones of Greek mythology and Celtic folklore, Oona’s story also addresses very real concerns: sexual violence, abortion, postpartum depression, and the legacy of familial trauma. Similarly, Aitken’s prose is by turns placidly lyrical, humorous, and sharply pointed, honed by women’s anger over countless generations. Bold and perceptive, Aitken’s self-assured storytelling and understanding of classic themes stand out in contemporary Irish fiction.

May 15, 2020
A mother's quest to find her estranged daughter is wrapped around another, earlier mother-daughter story of secrets and superstition, violence and desperation, rooted on a wind-whipped island. A fevered intensity drives British writer Aitken's debut, along with an unrelenting stress on femaleness and maternal attachment. In parallel timelines, it traces the lonely, burdened life of child and adult Oona Coughlan, daughter of an obsessively restrictive mother on the Irish-speaking island of Inis. The free-spirited child, born while her mother was having a vision of the Virgin Mary, lives a narrow life compared to her brothers--"There's no leaving the island. Not for a woman"--and Oona strains against her bonds, yearning for a different mother, like Aislinn, the incomer and healer who lives on the cliff edge. Aitken's lyrical voice evokes the perilous fishing community and the harsh beauty of the island while piling on the high-colored, often blood-drenched events. There's a miscarriage, a witchy outcast who gives birth on the beach, a murder, a fire, a rape, a drowning, a home birth that shocks a child, a shipwreck. Meanwhile, in the other, interleaved narrative stream, dating some 20 years later, adult Oona, married to Pat and living in Canada, is desperate to reconnect with her own daughter, Joyce, who has disappeared. An intermittent third narrative, spun like a fairy tale, punctuates events with suggestions of the Persephone myth, adding one more layer of emphasis to the matrilineal theme. These overlapping, parallel threads, nearly always delivered at the same (high) emotional pitch and from Oona's fixated perspective, run an immensely long course as she travels her physical and psychological journey of emigration, postnatal depression, second pregnancy, loss, more loss, and, in a final circular spin, a return to the island where her two worlds may eventually become one. A stylish but overburdened fable of suffering and expiation.

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July 1, 2020

DEBUT Everyone has secrets on the island of Inis off the coast of Galway. In the small community under the sway of a domineering priest, the men make a meager living fishing while the women tend their ramshackle homes. Here Oona grows up with an overprotective mother and distant father, with two older brothers providing her only real support. Dreaming of escape, she gets her chance to leave when a shipwrecked stranger arrives on their shore and offers to take her away. Following a night of brutal violence, Oona accepts. Their shipboard marriage and move to Ottawa do little to improve Oona's life. Her overbearing mother-in-law, a new baby, and the corrosive secrets she keeps lead to a deep depression that alienates her husband and daughter. Many years later, a trip back to Ireland in search of her missing daughter finally forces her to confront the demons that upended her life. VERDICT A dreamy fairy tale winds its way through this moody story of loss and redemption, which focuses on mothers and daughters and the ways in which they grow apart and sometimes find their way back. For most fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 1/15/20.]--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

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