Island in Moonlight by Kathleen Sully – #1970Club

You may well know Brad’s blog Neglected Books. As the name suggests, he reads and reviews books that are neglected – but we’re not talking about authors who could do with a boost, like E.M. Delafield or Rose Macaulay. We’re talking authors who have almost entirely disappeared from the world – their books are near-impossible to track down, and often Brad is the only person to have written anything substantial about them online. One author he often mentions is Kathleen Sully.

Knowing how much he admired Sully, I popped her name on my mental list and kept an eye out – little expecting to stumble across one in the antiques shop in the village next to mine. It was especially surprising, given that they only have about 100 books for sale. But I came away with a proof copy of Island in Midnight (1970).

There is a slightly odd opening, of two young women sat in a high-class restaurant. They spot an attractive man who comes in – but, as one woman tells the other, ‘he played a mean trick on me’. She thought she was accompanying him to a party – but, instead, he delivered her to a friend who wanted to have an affair. And the friend was blind.

That’s the last we see of those women, but we are introduced to Alex (the blind man) and his friend Max, who goes out of his way to help Alex cheat on his wife. From this introduction, we shift into Alex’s first-person viewpoint. This is how it starts…

Until you’re blind, you don’t know what sight is – that is, if you go blind after having perfect sight. Close your eyes, bandage them, then walk about in the room you know the best – perhaps your bedroom. You thought you knew where the dresser was – eh? You’ve banged your shin, knocked over a lamp – broken the damned thing, no doubt, and landed up in a corner. And you think you know which corner. But it isn’t. And you’re so damned confused that you’re afraid to move again for a minute or two. When you do, you move slowly, cautiously, ready for anything – even a stuffed tiger that your wife bought from a sale that day and didn’t tell you about. And all the while – and this is the worst part – you expect a light to be switched on.

Alex lost his sight in an accident that we never really learn about. I quite liked Sully’s refusal to dress up the narrative with unnecessary plot details – the reader needs to know that Alex is blind, and isn’t able to come to terms with it; we don’t need to know the ins and outs of how it happened. Sully has a stripped-back approach to storytelling, more invested in how people react to their immediate and latest environment, without dwelling unduly on the past.

After an unfortunate sexual exploit, Alex’s wife intends to file for divorce and he determines to leave his current life and his homeland. Though his powers of visual recall are fading, there is one exception to this rule: an island he visited when he was only 20 years old. This is many decades in the past, but he has carried the experience with him ever since as some sort of exemplar of paradise.

Even as I write this, I can see the sweep of the bay as the ship pulled up to the tiny landing stage. The water was as transparent as the air and sky. And blue: the kind of blue you never see in this country. The white buildings set the blue off and the sand was pure gold, with gold’s soft glitter. There were oranges and lemons ripening in the orchards and the leaves of those trees were dark and polished, casting purple shadows. All shadows had intense colour on the island – no greys. The natives of the island were as beautiful as the flowers – and as innocent. And it seemed to me that there was always music: everybody had an instrument and played the thing. I promised myself an accordion but never bought one.

You can see how this sort of idyllic vision would have stayed with him. Impetuously, Alex determines to return to the island and start a new life there. He’s as selfish in this decision as he is in every other. Sully doesn’t waste too much time trying to make Alex a sympathetic character: he is monstrously self-interested, with affections for others but no pretence that he would ever put their needs ahead of his.

His chauffeur, Pell, is persuaded to accompany Alex to the island and get him set up there. As it approaches, Pell (whose perspective we get throughout his chapter) struggles to align what he’s seeing with Alex’s memories. Rather than lapping Meditterean shores in bright sunshine, he sees ‘grey water lashing at the low concrete wall of the water-front’.

Out of season, the island is miserable. Alex is spared the bleakness of the visuals, and can superimpose his recollections of the island of his youth – but he can’t ignore how abandoned and hopeless the island feels. There are no tourists, little industry, and a crowd of locals without much going for them. There’s Lyn, a tart-with-a-heart type who is running low on ‘heart’; there’s the proprietor of Joe’s restaurant whose fondness for Alex will only run as far as his income; there’s Willis, who agrees to be a sort of Man Friday for Alex while supposedly looking out for somewhere he can live – though, knowing this will be the end of their financial relationship, is in no hurry to secure anywhere.

As the story develops, perhaps the most important relationship is one suffused in memories – the woman he had a brief affair with back when he was 20, and the possible consequences of that affair all these decades later…

I know Brad doesn’t think much of Island in Moonlight, but I thought it was really good. I can’t compare with Sully’s other writing, as this is my first of her novels, but I was very much attracted by her writing style. It is sparse, often dialogue-heavy, and the shifts into different characters’ first-person narratives is done sharply, entering straight into their mindset without any fanfare. The plot whizzes by, if it can be called a plot, and there is precious little character development. But there is such an assurance to Sully’s writing that I felt totally confident in being taken wherever she wanted to take me. Island in Moonlight is an odd, sparse book that breaks a whole lot of conventional novelistic rules without putting anything too experimental in their place – and it sold me on Sully. I’ll definitely keep looking out for her.