A review by nothingforpomegranted
Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn

adventurous hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

I love the concept of this book, exploring abandoned places to understand what becomes of them and the power of nature to return and surprise us; however, I wasn’t able to fully embrace the book itself. It started from the very first chapter: Flyn’s prose is filled with unusual adjectives and poetic phrasing that created a distance between me and the places she described. As the book continued, there were countless mentions of the scientific names of flora and fauna that really meant nothing to me and just created more distance. Furthermore, though each chapter ostensibly focused on one abandoned place, Flyn often digressed into other stories that distracted me from the image she was painting of that place, as well as the point she was making about that particular type of abandonment. In fact, I felt that there were just too many chapters all together with too many abandoned places and not enough connections drawn between them. Flyn is a passionate, brave, devoted research, and I admire her commitment to her craft. Indeed, there were some beautiful moments and paragraphs throughout the book (I was particularly struck by the chapters about Verdun, Montserrat, and Swona) that I really enjoyed, that I learned from, and that I hope to remember. Overall, though, I found this disappointing, and all the more so because I was so excited for it.