Island

by Patrick Downes

Overview

A teenaged boy struggles as he watches his family and relationships fracture after the death of his mother, and is now faced with the terrible possibility that his twin brother may have just killed their father.

Seventeen-year-old Rad comes home to find his father lying broken and dead at the bottom of the ravine behind their house. Rad’s twin brother, shaken but very much alive, had watched their father fall.

Desperate to understand what has happened before calling the police, Rad confronts his brother and the complicated landscape of their past. He reconstructs not just the circumstances leading to his father’s death, but the history of his family.

How can a family simply disintegrate? Were they ever happy, or were the roots of unhappiness always there? What plagued his father? What plagues Rad?

As the time comes to do the right thing, the question remains. Did his brother kill their father? And what will happen to the boys now?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773061924
Publisher:	Groundwood Books
Publication date:	05/01/2019
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	HL660L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

PATRICK DOWNES’ first two novels for young adults, Fell of Dark and Ten Miles One Way, received multiple starred reviews and were named to best-of lists (NYPL Best Books for Teens, Booklist Top 10, Kirkus Best Teen Reads). He is also the author of Come Home, Angus (illustrated by Boris Kulikov), a picture book.

A New York City native, Patrick splits his time between the United States and Canada.

Read an Excerpt

"“Jacqui?” I had never said her name, and it felt sticky and sweet on my lips, like cotton candy.

“Rad, I’ve spent some time thinking about this. I think we should be friends.”

Silence. I was tasting her name, the taste of blue.

“What do you think, Rad? Interested?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to be friends with me?”

Jacqui rocked back and forth on her feet. “Don’t be stupid,” she said.

“That’s hard for me,” I said. [54]

"

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Island:

“[A] narrative that also makes space for love and understanding, where bridges triumph over isolation.” — Booklist

Praise for Fell of Dark (NYPL Best Books for Teens 2015, Booklist Top 10 Religion and Spirituality Books for Youth 2015, Publishers Weekly Best Summer Books 2015)



[star] “... readers willing to sink into the depths of two unstrung teens and their frantic individual struggles to understand the cruelties and redemptions of the universe will be rewarded by this disarming thought-provoking and entrancing story.” — Booklist, starred review



[star] “For many readers, this will be an impersonal but impressive work of literary art. But for some, serendipity will strike, whether in an image or in a confused, despairing reaction to an incomprehensible world, and Downes’s vision will connect into an epiphany.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

Praise for Ten Miles One Way (Kirkus Best Teen Reads 2017)



[star] “Downes subtly plumbs the depths of mental illness within the broader context of relationship and self-awareness …. An intricate, unusual love story for readers attuned to compassion.” — Kirkus, Starred review



“Many readers will connect with this raw, powerful portrait of a young person living with mental illness.” — School Library Journal

"

Editorial Reviews

[A] narrative that also makes space for love and understanding, where bridges triumph over isolation.

Booklist

07/12/2019

Gr 10 Up-When 17-year-old Konrad finds his father dead at the bottom of a ravine, his twin brother Key confesses potential responsibility. However, of the twins, Key has always been calm and caring while Rad's emotions are extreme, typically tending toward rage. Before contacting the police, Rad seeks the truth, but his twin's inability to explain their father's death triggers an outburst of fury followed by dejection and a consideration of the family's history. Through Rad's scattered account of the past, readers learn that the twins' mother died suddenly years earlier, that their father was mentally ill, and that Rad failed to sustain what could have been an amorous relationship with his best friend. Rad's disjointed retelling often stops mid-sentence or abruptly changes perspective, making the teen an unreliable and rather confusing narrator, and although the twins have long been left to care for themselves, Rad reads older than his age and Key older still. Readers will struggle through the work's long digressions into the meaning of happiness and the often-forced idea of the island as a metaphor. VERDICT Rather than the history of Rad's family that is conveyed, readers will be left wishing for the side of the story they do not receive.-Maggie Mason Smith, Clemson University, SC

School Library Journal

2019-03-03

Seventeen-year-old Konrad "Rad" Schoe's mentally ill father is dead, and he doesn't know how to feel about it.

When Rad's twin brother, Key, claims he might be responsible for the fact that their father's body is lying dead at the bottom of a ravine, Rad doesn't know whether to believe him. Key has always been calm and loving while Rad is haunted by intense emotions that often manifest in fits of rage, much like their father's. As Rad tries to understand what happened—and to protect his brother from the police—he tells the story of how their family fell apart, including his father's first mental breakdown and his mother's sudden death. Throughout, Rad struggles to keep his hold on reality—and to fight his fear that he may suffer from the same mental illness that runs in his family. Rad's erratic voice, which includes truncated sentences and quick changes in perspective, is darkly poetic but often reads much older than his age. Furthermore, the unresolved plot points make the novel feel more like literary fiction than young adult. The island metaphor that runs throughout sometimes feels forced, as do the romantic relationships. Rad and his family are white and working class, Key is queer, and two secondary characters are implied biracial (Korean/white).

A psychological portrait of a family torn apart by grief and mental illness that is, at times, overly dramatic. (Fiction. 16-adult)

Kirkus Reviews