A review by randomprogrammer
Island by Aldous Huxley

3.0

Sermon masquerading as a narrative. The worst part is that I rather liked some key messages in Huxley's sermon, but see, I was hoping to read...you know...a book. Huxley could have given the world a much more engaging piece of literature if he had only revealed this utopia in true narrative form, perhaps from the viewpoint of the lifetime of the two children, the island girl and the prince. We could have followed them as they grew, felt the depths of their worldviews, seen the pain of their conflict. We would have identified with both of them, and had to really think and feel about the different systems.

Instead we got a lecture on how to live thinly disguised as a story, and tepidly weak writing as a result. The lecture was a bit too anti materialism and contained a sort of naive positivity towards lifelong drug use, but it had some wonderful stuff about physical activity, adoption clubs, thoughtfulness, teaching. styles, and sexual positivity.

Anyway, I think a prospective reader would do better to read a bullet point summary of Huxley's key propositions on Wikipedia.