She Treads Softly: Alice's Island

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Alice's Island

Alice's Island by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo
Atria Books: 4/16/19
eBook review copy; 400 pages
ISBN-13: 9781501171956

Alice's Island by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo is a so-so domestic mystery.

Alice Dupont's husband dies of natural causes, a brain aneurysm, in his car miles away from where he said he was. Alice, soon to be the mother of two, undertakes an investigation of her own to find out why her husband was on the road where his car was found and where he had been coming from before that, as he was clearly on his way home from somewhere else. She retraces her husband's trip and finds clues that lead her to Robin Island, a small island located near Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Alice moves to the island, using her maiden name, with her two daughters, six-year-old Olivia and infant Ruby. She then sets out to spy on the residents of the small island in an attempt to find out what her husband was doing and if he was cheating on her.

This is Arévalo's first novel to appear in English, so perhaps something was lost in the translation, as far as the actual writing goes, so I'm giving a pass to any quibbles with the writing and the dialogue. I can say that the novel felt padded and I was losing patience with it and Alice. The search was interminable and, well, stupid and pointless. She wanted to know where he had been, so why not tell the truth to people? Why make up a lie? Why move to the island and continue lying? Why not simply tell people who you are and what you want to know? All the bribing people, clandestine spying on people, and supposition about what could have happened was pointless and especially trying on this reader.

Alice herself starts out as a sympathetic character. Her husband has just died, she is close to having their second daughter, and she doesn't know why he was in that part of the country. Then she starts to lose credibility as her weird search for "the truth" begins along with her needless lying. She loses all sympathy when she begins spending large sums of money (at a conveniently placed spy store) to actively spy and snoop on people and begins an affair with a married man. A novel with an interesting start, tedious overly-padded middle, and uninteresting, albeit happy, ending.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria Books.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.