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xach 's review for:
Treasure Island!!!
by Sara Levine
Loved this book.
This is a short book that will start long conversations. Rather than seeking to answer questions for the reader, Sara Levine has chosen to offer readers a dynamic, robust main character who is flawed in a great many ways to serve as an amazing unreliable narrator through a journey of discovery. More than just self-discovery, "Treasure Island!!!" brings up questions of family, friends, relationships, and how a single unmoored person can reveal so much in so many people.
Because the novel has a very small cast of characters, the reader gets to spend a fair amount of time witnessing how each one interacts with the narrator, and how she interacts with them through her skewed narrative. The information that the narrator chooses to share is as important as the information withheld from the reader, but revealed through descriptions and the way other characters interact with her.
I definitely laughed more at the beginning than I did at the end of the book, but the humor is present the whole way through. It punctuates the narrative with releases of laughter that are at the same time insightful windows into the narrator, who has a very dry sense of humor but also a skewed perception of reality. As the narrative progressed, I began to see the humorous moments not as only joking, but also as indicators of the problems the narrator was facing and how humor was used as a defense against self-realization. By the end of the novel, I still saw the jokes and found them darkly amusing, but I'd become so attached to the main character that I no longer could separate the funny quips in the narrative from the emotional sympathy I felt for her.
Where I think the novel makes its strongest move is in its arguable lack of resolution or redemption. This is what I meant when I stated at the beginning that rather than offer answers, the novel asks questions. The main character does, in some way, have several moments of redemption. However, none are truly seen through to the end. In the same way, the other players in the story are also given moments to redeem themselves, and only see their own redemption through halfway. By denying the reader a clear-cut path to redemption for any of the characters, the narrative asks the reader to engage in the question of "Why?" Why deny the characters that act of absolution? What have they done to earn it? What have they yet to learn? These are the questions that will nag most readers who try to figure out the ending in great depth. Additionally, by not really resolving the ending, the narrative makes the reader wonder what happens next. Where do the characters go from here?
It's an ending full of possibilities and full of potential, all of which is left wide open for reader interpretation.
Structurally, I also greatly enjoyed the way the novel made use of foreshadow, and how each move in the story seemed necessary to get the characters into the next positions, but didn't seem forced. No character suffered from a Deus ex Machina, they were all moving organically, each according to his or her own flaws and shortcomings, as well as strengths.
In short, I recommend this book. If you can shed yourself of expectations and allow the novel to surprise you in how you define crazy, what you mean by "protagonist," and what you expect from a resolution, you can be delighted by the wonderfully insane story of "Treasure Island!!!"
This is a short book that will start long conversations. Rather than seeking to answer questions for the reader, Sara Levine has chosen to offer readers a dynamic, robust main character who is flawed in a great many ways to serve as an amazing unreliable narrator through a journey of discovery. More than just self-discovery, "Treasure Island!!!" brings up questions of family, friends, relationships, and how a single unmoored person can reveal so much in so many people.
Because the novel has a very small cast of characters, the reader gets to spend a fair amount of time witnessing how each one interacts with the narrator, and how she interacts with them through her skewed narrative. The information that the narrator chooses to share is as important as the information withheld from the reader, but revealed through descriptions and the way other characters interact with her.
I definitely laughed more at the beginning than I did at the end of the book, but the humor is present the whole way through. It punctuates the narrative with releases of laughter that are at the same time insightful windows into the narrator, who has a very dry sense of humor but also a skewed perception of reality. As the narrative progressed, I began to see the humorous moments not as only joking, but also as indicators of the problems the narrator was facing and how humor was used as a defense against self-realization. By the end of the novel, I still saw the jokes and found them darkly amusing, but I'd become so attached to the main character that I no longer could separate the funny quips in the narrative from the emotional sympathy I felt for her.
Where I think the novel makes its strongest move is in its arguable lack of resolution or redemption. This is what I meant when I stated at the beginning that rather than offer answers, the novel asks questions. The main character does, in some way, have several moments of redemption. However, none are truly seen through to the end. In the same way, the other players in the story are also given moments to redeem themselves, and only see their own redemption through halfway. By denying the reader a clear-cut path to redemption for any of the characters, the narrative asks the reader to engage in the question of "Why?" Why deny the characters that act of absolution? What have they done to earn it? What have they yet to learn? These are the questions that will nag most readers who try to figure out the ending in great depth. Additionally, by not really resolving the ending, the narrative makes the reader wonder what happens next. Where do the characters go from here?
It's an ending full of possibilities and full of potential, all of which is left wide open for reader interpretation.
Structurally, I also greatly enjoyed the way the novel made use of foreshadow, and how each move in the story seemed necessary to get the characters into the next positions, but didn't seem forced. No character suffered from a Deus ex Machina, they were all moving organically, each according to his or her own flaws and shortcomings, as well as strengths.
In short, I recommend this book. If you can shed yourself of expectations and allow the novel to surprise you in how you define crazy, what you mean by "protagonist," and what you expect from a resolution, you can be delighted by the wonderfully insane story of "Treasure Island!!!"