The Thread: Fiction about islands during a time of isolation
Admit it: Sooner or later, reruns of shows you’ve already binge-watched are going to get old. Even though we have to socially distance ourselves from our friends and some family, we don’t have to disconnect from another type of friend: the novel.
Over the next month, join me and other readers on a series I’m calling “Fiction in a Time of Isolation.” These works will include sunshine, suspense, spiritual awakening, spies and some silliness — everything we need in our socially distant lives during this pandemic.
This week, I present three novels meant to bust your social-isolation blues about sun-dappled, solitary island life.
First up: “The Winters,” which is Lisa Gabriele’s 2018 spin on another novel I adore, Daphne DuMaurier’s “Rebecca.”
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In “The Winters,” author Gabriele brings us into the romantic courtship of wealthy, widowed Max Winters and his young, soon-to-be bride aboard a yacht in the Caymans. However, that romance does not prepare the 25-year-old narrator for what she encounters when Max takes her to Asherly, a brooding estate off the coast of Long Island.
Part of that is dealing with secrets and someone who’s been left behind. Gabriele describes the first Mrs. Winters as a beautiful, tempestuous woman who turned her adopted daughter, Dani, into a “mini-me.” The novel moves on from there, and I must say the author does well by the dark drama set up in the book, “Rebecca.” I insist you read them back-to-back — you’ve got time!
My second island-inspired novel is from authors Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian, who partnered up on the 2013 young adult novel “Burn for Burn.” In it, we head to the made-up Jar Island “that lets people pretend the world has stopped spinning” and meet three teenage girls who form a friendship to exact revenge on the mean boy and girls who wronged them. If your teen reader — or you — race through the novel, good news! It’s part of a trilogy that includes two more delicious books.
Finally, we head to an island off the coast of Kenya in Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s “The Dragonfly Sea.”
In the novel published last spring, a young woman slips into the sea and enters a supernatural realm. This kickstarts an odyssey into beautiful and ethereal worlds.
“The Dragonfly Sea” is nearly 500 pages, but maybe that’s just right for the times we find ourselves in.
My three island-inspired Thread must-reads: