Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Haven

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Haven by Emma Donoghue

8 reviews

serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Skellig Michael is stark and austere, a seemingly uninhabitable rock off the coast of Ireland where a monastery was established sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries. A lightly fictionalised version of that island is the setting for Haven, in which Emma Donoghue imagines the establishment of a monastery by just three men - Artt, a learned and strict priest, and two monks selected by him. Cormac is an older man who came to the monastery late in life after a colourful life blighted by personal losses, while Trian is a mere youth and more than a little awkward who was placed in the monastery by his parents when he was 13. Haven is a slow moving novel with little in the way of plot - plenty of details about killing birds for food, constructing buildings and a large cross with rock, and copying manuscripts. The real interest for me lay with the three men, seeing their personalities reveal themselves as they adapted to their spartan existence, witnessing their different understandings of their faith, and most especially seeing the relationships between the three play out. I especially enjoyed seeing Cormac and Trian support each other against the puritanical, sometimes cruel, and often impractical Artt. I also loved the atmosphere Donoghue brought to life on the page - claustrophobic, sometimes tense, isolated, unwelcoming, inhospitable, plus the feeling of always being judged and found lacking.

This won’t be a book for every reader and I did have some quibbles, including a gender related plot point that was introduced late in the novel but never fully developed. But, somewhat to my surprise, I’ve recently enjoyed a few quiet, literary historical novels centred around characters exploration and expression of faith - so long as they don’t strike me as prosletising. I can now add Haven to that list.

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ceruleanseas's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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hannahrhian's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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afion's review against another edition

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3.5

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Title: Haven
Author: Emma Donoghue
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: 4.0
Pub Date: August 23, 2022

T H R E E • W O R D S

Patient • Timely • Riveting

📖 S Y N O P S I S

In seventh-century Ireland, three men vow to leave the world behind. They set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them. What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael. The steep, rocky terrain and bare island is unforgiving, and the three must band together in order to survive.

💭 T H O U G H T S

Emma Donoghue is an auto-buy author for me, so it will be no surprise that Haven was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. If you'd have asked me if a book based in religion set in 600 AD would interest me, my first impulse would have been to say no. Yet, Donoghue has a way of taking the most uninteresting plot and making it shine.

The strength is in the evocative writing style and the vivid island atmosphere. This is a slow-moving narrative, where not a whole lot happens, yet I was captivated by the journey of these three characters. It is a story of faith and devotion, while also raising issues of gender, survival, and needs versus wants.

Haven was definitely not my favourite Emma Donoghue book, yet one of the reasons I love her writing is that each book is so different from the last. Don't let the synopsis keep you from picking up was is at its heart a story of isolation, spirituality and survival.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• Emma Donoghue devotees
• readers who enjoy isolated stories of survival

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"To travel is to turn the pages of the great book of life."

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tamara_joy's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.75

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rosiecockshutt's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was a true boiling frog novel, in the best way possible. I loved what it was and how it was written at the beginning, and also at the end, but they had two very separate vibes! Personally I really prefer this style of tension buildup to books that are just high anxiety from page one -
Haven got me get invested before giving me absolute heart palpitations!
Definitely check trigger warnings for this one, especially anything regarding religion.

And all of that’s not even getting into the brilliance of Donoghue’s characters. From how we first meet them to the way we last see them, it’s a seamless but astonishing transition for each and every one of them. Amazing!

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redwrapped's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Haven is a rich, evocative meditation on the frailty and strength of mankind and the psychological effects of faith and isolation, bound by duty to God and each other, bolstered by crystalline, reflective descriptions, and a focus on the world and history of the setting. Always thoughtful and often breathtaking, Haven is a immense but fraught study on the intersection between history, nature, religion, and psychology.

One monk, Artt, has a dream that he takes to believe is a command from God to break away from the monastery and escape from sin and rote temptations and leave for a new world where he and two others will not be distracted from their holy work: copying a Bible by hand and building an altar and a church, surrounded only by nature and isolation.

Soon, Artt is sworn loyalty to by his two followers and they listen to his directives, even as he becomes more fervent in his desire for an ideal world and overzealous in religiosity, meting out punishment and sacrificing their safety for demonstrations of worship and penitence to God. As winter nears closer and they run out of wood to burn and food to eat, and Artt becomes more deluded and needy for absolution, will the three of them be able to survive the island and their own self-doubt?

Trian and Cormac are some of the most well-rounded, well-intentioned, and honest characters I've seen for some time. Their trust and eventual bond between each other is heartrending. The change in Artt is imperceptible; maybe because his drive and ambition at the cost of others was always there under his good works.

As the story goes on, layer after layer of reverberations and aftereffects are uncovered, and the centuries between when the story takes place and the contemporary time we live in dissolves into a translucent allegory and warning to us all.

Is Artt a man bent on destruction in his selfish quest for sainthood, or a man willing to do nearly anything to get closer to God? Is Haven an allegory on religious fanaticism to the point of endangering people, or the portrait of men seeking God regardless of personal risk? Does mankind always destroy nature in a personal quest, chasing fulfillment, or does nature have to dwindle and be destroyed before men can look around and realize their fulfillment? Are men in isolation only capable of destruction or are they reduced to destruction due to their own limitations? What drives a man to make himself be worthy of God, anyway?

Haven is an engrossing and mesmerizing look into humanity's greatest faults and strengths, and shows a world on the verge of change, just as the world is right now.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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