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The Islands

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A moving and original debut novel. Observant, warm and extraordinary.

'There is an other-worldly quality about the Abrolhos which is beyond the reach of ordinary storytelling. Emily Brugman has captured them, staked them to the page in all their isolation and aridity and scoured indifference, because her storytelling is extraordinary.' Jock Serong, bestselling author of Preservation

'Strongly written, deeply felt, original.' Tegan Bennett Daylight

'Beautiful, fresh, wise and true - startlingly good.' - Robert Drewe, award-winning author of Whipbird


In the mid-1950s, a small group of Finnish migrants set up camp on Little Rat, a tiny island in an archipelago off the coast of Western Australia. The crayfishing industry is in its infancy, and the islands, haunted though they are by past shipwrecks, possess an indefinable allure.

Drawn here by tragedy, Onni Saari is soon hooked by the stark beauty of the landscape and the slivers of jutting coral onto which the crayfishers build their precarious huts. Could these reefs, teeming with the elusive and lucrative cray, hold the key to a good life?

The Islands is the sweeping story of the Saari family: Onni, an industrious and ambitious young man, grappling with the loss of a loved one; his wife Alva, quiet but stoic, seeking a sense of belonging between the ramshackle camps of the islands and the dusty suburban lots of the mainland; and their pensive daughter Hilda, who dreams of becoming the skipper of her own boat. As the Saari's try to build their future in Australia, their lives entwine with those of the fishing families of Little Rat, in myriad and unexpected ways.

A stunning, insightful story of a search for home.


'A beautiful, breathtaking, salty book about finding home on the far reaches of the continental shelf.' Marele Day, author of bestselling Lambs of God

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    • Books+Publishing

      December 1, 2021
      It’s the 1950s and the Finnish migrants who have made their home on the ruthless terrain of Little Rat Island are accustomed to surviving harsh landscapes, both emotional and physical. But in The Islands debut novelist Emily Brugman juxtaposes this toughness with a softness, and a search for love and meaning, in the hearts of her characters. Onni moves to Little Rat, one of the Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia, when his brother is lost at sea. He is a cautious but ambitious man whose wife, Alva, harbours a hope for their relationship that surprises her: ‘because where she came from, happiness was not necessarily something one was entitled to or expected to find’. They search for the elusive ‘good life’, although this comes to mean something different to each of them. Alva, Onni and their daughter, Hilda, each search for meaning and a place to belong amid the transience of their lives, which are intertwined, both literally and metaphorically, with the ebbs and flows of the natural world, which are rendered beautifully by the author. Brugman writes with great compassion, and there is a stillness in the moments of bearing witness to the lives of her characters that recalls writers like Hannah Kent or Mirandi Riwoe. The Islands is an accomplished debut with a big heart.   Bec Kavanagh is a Melbourne writer and academic, and the schools programmer at the Wheeler Centre. 

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  • English

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