The Island of Mists and Miracles
Mas’ second novel is translated from the French by Frank Wynne. It wasn’t until I checked the details to write this review that I realised that it had been translated; the language is lyrical, flowing and engaging. Set on a small island, with an island’s sense of tightly interwoven community and a touch of claustrophobia, the novel tells the tale of a young convent nun who asks to be sent to the island because of a prophecy that she will witness a vision of the Virgin Mary there. Unfortunately, it turns out that she will witness someone else’s vision…
Beautifully crafted, this book gripped me right up to the last dozen pages or so. There is what I felt to be the perfect ending to the book at that point; it made me go “oof!” and put the book down, completely satisfied, but then there was more to read. I felt that the wrapping-up scenes, set fourteen years later, were unnecessary, and detracted a little from the sparse beauty of the rest of the writing.
I’m not sure how to categorise this book: historical fiction, certainly, the bulk of it is set in something that feels late 20th-century, harking back to a start in the 1830s. It is also a superbly suspenseful thriller; at times it felt like a Carl Hiaasen story. And through it all is the landscape as character, seen through the eyes of the boy who has known and loved it all his life. Read it, you won’t regret it. Just leave it a day or two before catching up with the characters in those last few pages.
