Title: Marrow Island Author: Alexis M. Smith
Published: June 7, 2016
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 244
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Twenty years ago Lucie Bowen left Marrow Island; along with her mother, she fled the aftermath of an earthquake that compromised the local refinery, killing her father and ravaging the island’s environment. Now, Lucie’s childhood friend Kate is living within a mysterious group called Marrow Colony—a community that claims to be “ministering to the Earth.” There have been remarkable changes to the land at the colony’s homestead. Lucie’s experience as a journalist tells her there’s more to the Colony—and their charismatic leader-- than they want her to know, and that the astonishing success of their environmental remediation has come at great cost to the Colonists themselves. As she uncovers their secrets and methods, will Lucie endanger more than their mission? What price will she pay for the truth?
From Alexis M. Smith, author of Glaciers, comes Marrow Island, an exciting, much-anticipated sophomore novel that falls into the growing climate-themed post-apocalyptic subgenre. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to expectations in any way, really. Smith’s prose, characters, and storyline were all lackluster, and upon reading the final chapter I was left with no lasting impression. Another reviewer used the word “anemic”, and I think that’s a very fitting description of this text.
Marrow Island is a dual-chronology book that switches between 2014 (before the “incident”) and 2016 (after). As in many novels of this sort, the “incident” in question that haunts the characters is kept under wraps until close to the end. And, similarly to most other novels, when the reader is finally allowed to know what the big to-do was all about after so much build-up, the scene itself was vastly underwhelming. Just because of this, the story failed to be impactful, since everything is leading up to a less than rewarding climax. Between good guesswork and Smith’s foreshadowing, it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened to Lucie on Marrow Island with the members of the Colony, and in my opinion, the narrative set up that scene to be a far bigger deal than it really was in practice.
I suppose one could say that I finished this book asking myself “so what even happened in this book anyway?” which is generally a bad sign, though I’d point out that from this author, I was expecting something along those lines. Glaciers was beautifully written, insightful, but not heavy on action. Marrow Island has quite a bit more action, but was certainly lacking in import and prose quality. Things did happen in the book, but they felt weak and lifeless and lacking in substance: anemic.
Perhaps it could be that literary novels about cults rising in the aftermath of ecological disasters are, well…rather common these days. This type of post-apocalytic fiction, usually with some pretty blatant environmentalist themes, is far from difficult to find in the upmarket segment of the industry. (See: The Road, Station Eleven, California, Warm Bodies, etc.) Which isn’t to say that there isn’t room for more books like this, but I think especially after heavy hitters like Cormac McCarthy have already gone there, you’re going to have to work hard to write a book that stands out.
Honestly, Marrow Island isn’t bad or poor in quality or anything like that; I don’t have any major points of contention. It’s a short, readable novel about a woman whose home way destroyed in a tragedy and who gets mixed up in the cult that’s trying to remediate the polluted land. If this kind of novel is your thing, it’s absolutely worth a read. For me, it was just pretty underwhelming overall. I’m hoping that Alexis M. Smith’s next novel will capture the beauty of her debut, which was so sadly lacking in this.
